For Peace in Ukraine, Stop NATO Expansion

After nearly three years of an ever more brutal proxy war against Moscow, American and European officials are finally discussing the possibility of peace negotiations. Even Ukraine’s Zelensky government, which early in the conflict banned any talks with Russia, is acknowledging the obvious.

Nevertheless, Washington’s bipartisan War Party, which shares blame with Vladimir Putin for the Russo–Ukrainian war, seems determined to drag America into any future conflict even though Americans have shown no desire to fight for Kiev. If President-elect Donald Trump wants to end the war, he should begin by rejecting U.S. and NATO involvement in this or a future conflict involving Ukraine.

The clash between Moscow and Kiev was tragically unnecessary. Although the decision to invade was Vladimir Putin’s alone, the allies recklessly created the circumstances leading to war. The Clinton administration decided to treat the Yeltsin government as a defeated power and ignored a string of assurances that the transatlantic alliance would not advance to Russia’s border. In time the Russian Bear recovered its strength, leading to repeated warnings of future consequences, including from then-U.S. Ambassador (and now CIA Director) William Burns. Before Moscow’s attack the allies curtly rejected Putin’s demand for negotiations over Ukrainian NATO membership, detailed by the alliance's then-Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Had the allies abandoned plans to militarize Russia’s lengthy border with Ukraine, there would have been no invasion. They, too, are drenched in blood.

Desperate with the approach of the Trump presidency, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a “victory plan” that started with immediate NATO membership. Although that effort fizzled, he now suggests the possibility of negotiations and territorial concessions, but only if the alliance embraces a shrunken Ukraine: “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we should quickly take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control.” Afterwards, he said he expects diplomacy somehow to restore the territory now occupied by Russia. 

Some European officials have picked up Zelensky’s idea. Lithuania’s Defense Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas recently argued: “Lithuania always supported Ukraine's invitation into the NATO, because in our understanding, you cannot send the message to Russia that they have at least informal veto power on NATO's enlargement.” Similarly, Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, said his nation’s “clear position” was that Ukraine should receive “full NATO membership” or other Western security guarantees. 

They are playing hawks on the cheap. Lithuania’s and Estonia’s militaries are rounding errors—12,228 in the former’s entire army, and just 3,750 in the latter’s force. They obviously wouldn’t be defeating Russia in any war.

Recently joining Kasčiūnas and Tsahkna was Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whose Green Party has traded its pacifist past for the ghosts of Germany’s Prussian militarist glories. Berlin’s lame duck government remains sharply divided over NATO membership for Kiev, but she embraced Zelensky’s idea, opining that inclusion is one of the “different elements of a peace.” Yet Berlin is desperately unready for war, despite a welcome increase in military outlays. Presumably, she views that as Washington’s problem.

Much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment also believes that Americans should be prepared to die for Ukraine. For instance, the Washington-based Atlantic Council acts as a PR operation for Kiev. The group recently published a Ukrainian who explained why she believed it was in America’s interest to risk nuclear war over her nation. Other groups, such as the George W. Bush Presidential Center, are no less enthusiastic about treating Ukraine as if it were an American state. The Center argues that Biden’s failure to bring Ukraine into NATO offers “the new U.S. administration opportunities to get Ukraine right.” This time millions could die in the conflict, instead of merely hundreds of thousands as in Bush’s Iraq debacle.

President-elect Donald Trump should announce on day one that Ukraine will not be joining NATO. Ever. That Ukraine is not worth war, especially a potentially nuclear conflagration. 

Washington should not accumulate allies like Facebook friends. The purpose of U.S. alliances should be to enhance American security, not provide foreign charity. In any conflict involving Ukraine and Russia it would be America, not Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, or the rest of Europe, which would be do the bulk of the fighting, including any nuclear escalation. Rather than protect the U.S., Kiev’s inclusion in NATO would make war more likely.

Russia does not threaten America. The Cold War is over. There is neither ideological nor territorial conflict between Washington and Moscow. Nor is there any indication that Putin has military ambitions against the rest of Europe. Indeed, his focus on NATO membership demonstrates his continuing desire to avoid conflict with the alliance. And this is recognized by those who are campaigning for Kiev’s inclusion, since if NATO membership would protect Ukraine from Russian aggression, it currently protects existing members even more so. NATO members would be at risk only by bringing an existing conflict, such as that in Ukraine, into the alliance.

Plenty of bad arguments have been offered for risking American lives on Kiev’s behalf. One is that Ukrainians want to join NATO, and “believe that Ukraine will never be truly secure unless it has the security guarantees that come with membership.” That doesn’t matter. Most of the world would like to be defended by the global superpower. Washington should be concerned about the security of Americans.

Another claim is that the world is at risk, with a new Dark Age threatening. The Bush Presidential Center improbably warned: “This war is now a global conflict between freedom and autocracy that risks ballooning into World War III if Putin is not stopped, as the entry of North Korean troops into the conflict illustrates.” In fact, the U.S. is for freedom, except when it is for autocracy, as in the Middle East and Central Asia, where its friends, partners, and allies are a mix of murderous democracies, authoritarian prisons, and totalitarian hellholes. Tragically, it is America’s Ukraine proxy war that pushed Moscow away from the West toward Iran, North Korea, and China. Escalating the conflict would unite them even more closely.

Hardly serious is Kasčiūnas’ contention that “you cannot send the message to Russia that they have at least informal veto power on NATO's enlargement.” No country has a right to join the alliance. New members should be invited only if doing so is in the interest of existing members. In any war with Russia, the U.S. would do the heavy lifting. Thus, avoiding an unnecessary war is a vital objective for Washington. If Estonia, Lithuania, and others want to play tough with Moscow, let them do so with the lives of their own peoples, not of Americans.

Zelensky contends that only NATO membership can halt the conflict since otherwise a ceasefire would be too dangerous. Similarly, Paul Grod of the Ukrainian World Congress argued: “By formally inviting Ukraine to join NATO and announcing the commencement of accession talks, the alliance would send a clear message to Moscow that its dreams of subjugating Ukraine and restoring the Russian Empire are futile.” Yet Moscow and Kiev are at war today, and the allies refused to fight. Why would they be more willing to fight tomorrow? If they were, that prospect would make Russia likely to prosecute the war even more vigorously and less likely to settle the current conflict short of victory.

Grod also claimed: “inviting Ukraine to join NATO would help deter Russia from engaging in aggression or malign actions in other parts of Europe… The security of Ukraine, eventually guaranteed by Article Five of the Washington Treaty, would ensure stability and peace throughout the Euro-Atlantic space.” Alyona Getmanchuk of the New Europe Center warned that failing to risk war for Ukraine “encourages [Putin] to believe his policy of invading and occupying neighboring countries to prevent them from joining NATO is successful and should be continued.” Thus, membership “would significantly enhance European security while reducing the current military burden on the United States, potentially freeing up US forces for deployment elsewhere.” 

Just who are these expected victims if Ukraine does not join NATO? Belarus is a Russian ally. Russia’s other European neighbors are already in NATO. If Moscow respects NATO, they are already protected. If it does not, then adding another member won’t make them safer. However, including a country with which Moscow is fighting a brutal war would risk expanding the conflict to the entire alliance. And elsewhere? With the 2008 conflict well in the past, Georgia has maintained a civil relationship with Moscow, which has shown no interest in attacking its other neighbors in the Caucasus and Central Asia. There is nothing more for Ukrainian membership to deter.

Getmanchuk also tosses in the sunk cost fallacy: “The United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in security assistance since Russia’s full-scale invasion began more than two years ago. This investment can only be regarded as successful if Ukraine is secure from further Russian attack.” Money spent is gone. It cannot be redeemed. The relevant question is whether Ukraine is worth a future war. It would be foolish to risk a new conflict in order to feel better about money wasted in the past.

Doubling down, she also claims that “NATO accession would likely be a far more economical way of safeguarding Ukraine’s future security than the regular financial support packages the country’s partners currently provide.” That is, it would be better to risk a devastating nuclear war that could end America as we know it, and spend more preparing for such a possibility, than to write checks to Ukraine. Such an argument is madness.

Finally, Grod and Getmanchuk imagine symbolic benefits. He contends that “Inviting Ukraine to join the alliance would demonstrate the unity and resolve of the collective West at a time when Russia and other autocracies are looking for signs of weakness.” She imagines that “granting Ukraine membership of the alliance is perhaps the only way to fully convince Russian society that neither the Soviet Union nor the Russian Empire will ever be restored in any form.” 

Yet offering future alliance membership while refusing to fight now, when it counts, looks more like weakness than resolve. Moreover, Moscow’s current policy, though tragically violent, has nothing to do with creating the Russian Empire, whether in Tsarist or Soviet form. Far from setting that as an objective, Putin rejected it. His critics too often give only the first sentence of his fabled judgment: “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.” He has been in power for a quarter of a century, yet has done nothing to revive the USSR. As for expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, that resulted in war, not security. 

In ending the Russo–Ukrainian war, much must be open to negotiation. One issue which should not be, however, is NATO membership for Ukraine. President-elect Trump should make clear that Kiev will not be invited to join.