NATO and Ukraine: The Peril of Indecision

Abstract

Despite the unprecedented level of cooperation and support behind defending Ukraine, no criteria or timeline for Ukraine’s accession to NATO were established at the July 2024 NATO summit in Washington. Meanwhile, the window for Ukraine’s accession may be closing as NATO member states become more risk averse and transatlantic support for Ukraine more brittle. Establishing the sequence of developments that would make membership ripe would at least restore NATO’s control over the process. NATO could explicitly frame the membership option as integral to ending the war and bringing security and stability to the region. Senior officials would need to present a clear account of how and under what assumptions Ukraine’s membership in NATO could come about. The West Germany model, though it would not be easy to digest or implement, remains the most plausible one.

Key words:

• Bucharest summit
• Donald Trump
• G7
• Israel model
• NATO
• NATO summit
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Vilnius summit
• Washington summit
• West Germany model

Notes

1 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘Washington Summit Declaration’, 10 July 2024, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm.

2 See North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘Bucharest Summit Declaration’, 3 April 2008 (updated 5 July 2022), https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm.

3 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘Vilnius Summit Communiqué’, 11 June 2023 (updated 19 June 2023), https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_217320.htm.

4 See Liana Fix, ‘The Future Is Now: Security Guarantees for Ukraine’, Survival, vol. 65, no. 3, June–July 2023, pp. 67–72.

5 Under the Israel model, Western allies would bilaterally provide major arms, military equipment and training to Ukraine on a long-term basis without establishing a formal alliance relationship, which would resemble the United States’ security arrangement with Israel. The West Germany model would call for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO without relinquishing its sovereign claim on Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory but forswearing the use of force against Russia, which would remain a de facto occupying power in parts of Ukraine, recalling the terms of West Germany’s admission to NATO in 1955. See Eliot A. Cohen, ‘The “Israel Model” Won’t Work for Ukraine’, Atlantic, 13 July 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/israelmodel-ukraine/674683/; and François Heisbourg, ‘How to End a War: Some Historical Lessons for Ukraine’, Survival, vol. 65, no. 4, August–September 2023, pp. 7–24.

6 See Ivo Daalder and Karen Donfried, ‘What Ukraine Needs From NATO’, Foreign Affairs, 26 March 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/what-ukraine-needs-nato.

7 See Heisbourg, ‘How to End a War’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liana Fix

Liana Fix is a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations.