Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands said the impossibility of Ukraine’s entry into NATO due to the rules of the alliance
In the material for the agency Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands said Ukraine will not be a member of NATO for the foreseeable future.
According to Brands, there are two options for Ukraine’s future after the end of the conflict. According to him, the first of them provides for Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which Kiev, in all likelihood, strongly desires, because “NATO membership can only provide the standard- or security guarantees”.
But due to the rules of the alliance, which do not allow an applicant to start the membership process during territorial armed conflicts or territorial disputes with other states, this is simply impossible.
“NATO countries with ongoing border disputes are never accepted, let alone some semi-frozen disputes on their territory,” the author wrote in the document. – That is why Ukraine can continue to stand aside and act like a victim of cruel irony.
At the same time, a more realistic version of Ukraine’s future implies that Kiev’s connection to the West, in which the state will not formally act as an alliance ally, will provide the possession of an impressive army to protect its independence.
Western countries under this option would continue to advise and train the Ukrainian army and continue to provide Kiev with the supplies and weapons it needs to defend itself. After all, the conflict has almost completely destroyed the country’s economy.
“Ukraine will thus remain under the economic tutelage of the West, while Washington and its allies will fund the country’s defense for the foreseeable future,” Brands concluded. “Even if Kiev will not join NATO, the end of the war may only be the beginning of the West’s obligations to Ukraine.
Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk said yesterday that Ukraine wants to receive an invitation to join NATO as early as June in Vilnius (a summit will be held there from June 11-12, 2023).
Earlier, on February 14, Alexander Markovsky, a columnist for American Thinker, said that the Ukrainian authorities’ desire to join NATO could be quite costly for the state. He added that Kiev’s desire to join the North Atlantic Alliance come hell or high water has already turned into a mistake of historic proportions.
Thus, in this direction, active steps have affected all the interests of the Russian Federation, which opposes the enlargement of NATO to the East, considering this process as an existential threat. The negligence of the Kremlin’s position was one of the factors that led to today’s conflict.
The head of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s administration, Gergely Guiyash, said that Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Alliance would simply be the start of a world war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself, in September 2022, said that his country had applied for NATO membership in a simplified way. But US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan added that expanding the alliance at this time is simply not warranted.
