Ukraine had a good NATO summit this time round. That may seem a strange judgement, after leaders in Washington again delivered an equivocal statement on exactly when Ukraine will start formal proceedings to join the alliance.
But the fact that the invitation wasn’t a big issue was a notable success. Another was that leaders took more important decisions on what is needed now to ensure that Russia’s attempt to extinguish Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence ends in total failure.
Of course, Ukraine’s membership of NATO is a very big issue. Russia’s full-on war on Ukraine – and Vladimir Putin’s repeated reminders that this is part of a war on ‘the West’ – have brought about fundamental changes in the European security environment.
That requires NATO to rethink fundamentally how its unifying vision of a Europe of peace and stability can be achieved. The continuing hedging and risk-aversion among some allies on Ukraine’s candidacy doesn’t encourage the view that this rethink is so far comprehensive or compelling enough.
The 10 July summit declaration tells us Ukraine is on ‘an irreversible path … to NATO membership’. So far so clear. But it goes on to say that Ukraine will be invited to join NATO ‘when Allies agree and conditions are met ’. Not so clear.
Practically, a good outcome for Ukraine
But what matters urgently now is substance and action, not the process by which Ukraine becomes a NATO ally. On the practical side, the summit delivered well for Ukraine.
Officials preparing for it understood that it needed to stimulate further substantial progress towards deploying allies’ (if not so much the alliance’s) assets in the quantities and capabilities that will enable Ukraine to expel Russian forces.
The announcements of significant new military packages for Ukraine at and before the summit signal that we may, at last, be seeing an end to the exasperating incrementality of military support.
What’s still missing? Yes, the invitation to join, let alone any sense of fast-tracking, is absent. Regrettable as this is, it helps to understand why.
There are 32 NATO allies. Coaxing all of them to a ‘yes’ is a significant task. The sceptics will argue that sidestepping the invitation question is common sense – avoiding being trapped in a process that rapidly looks like an immediate requirement to implement the alliance’s Article 5 collective-defence principle.
Not all allied countries’ political leaders yet acknowledge that Russia’s war is in effect already, in Article 5 language, ‘an attack against them all’. And at a time when some NATO countries face difficult and far-reaching elections, there is reluctance to make support for Ukraine an election issue. Not least if it can be mischaracterized by some campaigners as a question of whether to commit the country to war with Russia.
Avoiding two pitfalls
Two potential pitfalls need to be avoided. One is to offer as an excuse for failing to extend the invitation the argument that ‘Ukraine is not yet ready.’ This helps those in Euro-Atlantic electorates who want to see Russia’s unprovoked aggression as a conflict between two equally corrupt and dysfunctional countries and therefore one in which third countries should not get embroiled.
The second is letting the invitation issue become a serious irritant between Ukraine and supporting countries.
Both outcomes would delight Putin. Ukraine and its friends need to stay patient and help each other de-emphasize the invitation question. Early signs are that the summit has enabled them to do both things.
The focus needs to be on what the alliance will do, not what it won’t. The summit produced a strong outcome on strengthening coordination mechanisms to generate responses to Ukraine’s military needs more quickly. In terms of political will, this also sends a welcome signal that NATO countries see themselves as far from the limits of the support they are prepared to provide Ukraine.
In more practical terms, the meeting’s Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge – although at this stage more aspirational than operational – offers a good basis for a Ukraine-specific military industrial strategy that enables NATO to see off effectively and conclusively the Russian threat to peace and stability in Europe.
Spelling out NATO’s goals in Ukraine
Producing an industrial strategy is made more of a challenge by the absence of a clear NATO articulation of its own war aims. For the squeamish, this doesn’t need to be labelled as such – but near the top of the list of post-summit homework should sit a requirement to spell out clearly and simply the end goals of NATO’s support for Ukraine.
This summit’s declarations have made progress on objective-setting. But we are still lacking a clear, unequivocal commitment to help Ukraine sufficiently to compel the withdrawal of Russian forces to positions behind 1991 borders.
There is also still no commitment to participate alongside Ukraine in a future defensive posture that makes it impossible for Russia to violate those borders again.
If a NATO consensus on clear strategic objective-setting of this kind remains unattainable for now, those countries devoting significant military support to Ukraine owe it to their electorates to spell out what outcome they are seeking to achieve.