On Friday 4 March, in response to a request from the Ukrainian President asking NATO to send fighter planes to prevent Russian bombardments of Ukraine, the NATO Secretary General answered him publicly: “We made it clear that we were not going to enter Ukraine, neither on the ground nor in its airspace […] to avoid the extension of the war. Volodymyr Zelensky’s response was particularly scathing: “All those who are going to die from today will die because of you as well as Russia because of your weakness. The character is impressive. He obviously overestimated his “protectors”.
We are there. It should be remembered that the promise of NATO membership made to Ukraine dates back nearly 14 years. Similar promises were made and fulfilled with respect to all satellite states of the former USSR, despite all Russian protests, except for Ukraine and Georgia. They even went beyond what were the borders of the USSR with the inclusion of the three Baltic republics. The two unfulfilled but never withdrawn promises are based on comparable reasons. Membership of NATO is not finalized if there is a risk of a major and credible confrontation with Russia. The risk was low for admissions that occurred.
As for Georgia, very shortly after the promise wrung by George Bush Sr. in 2008 from a reluctant NATO, President Saakashvili tried to take back South Ossetia by force, relying on a favorable referendum in his country. Georgia was dismembered by Russia. The United States at war in Afghanistan did nothing but a limited number of sanctions that lasted a short time. Georgia is still waiting for NATO to give it what it calls the “Membership Action Plan”. This is never given to states that risk a major and direct confrontation with Russia. This has happened to Ukraine twice.
The first blow to a screeching halt came in 2014 with the uprising in Maidan Square in Kyiv which spanned several weeks during which US Senator John McCain and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland came to support the protesters. Ironically, ousted President Viktor Yanukovych was certainly highly corrupt, but his election, four years earlier, had for once been legitimized by European Union observers.
The totally unexpected result of these events was the capture of Crimea which, made up of more than 60% Russians, took place in two days with no casualties. If Putin had stopped there, the sanctions would have been limited. But he decided to take a mortgage on Ukraine’s geopolitical future by backing a rebellion in the Donbass region that had been Yanukovych’s stronghold and has continued until now. For Putin, the main objective of supporting this war which claimed more than 13,000 lives was to prevent, again, NATO membership. It is his central obsession that has led to the abominable war we are facing.
The Red line
For more than a year, Putin had been warning about “a red line” not to be crossed. Last July, he asserted in a long article that we were witnessing “supervision of the Ukrainian authorities in matters of security services by foreign advisers […] and the deployment of a NATO-specific infrastructure”. A few months later, as if to prove him right, Alexander Vershbow, former United States Ambassador to Moscow and former NATO Under-Secretary General, lamented in the magazine The National Interest that the process of Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance has still not been started. Failing that, he demanded that the military presence of various NATO countries which supervise the Ukrainian forces be increased and strengthened there and that more funding be provided for the construction of military infrastructure such as ports or airstrips. compatible with those of NATO. Moreover, it is known that missiles (non-nuclear, of course) which can strike military targets in Russia had been delivered to Ukraine.
Everything happened as if we were trying to bring Ukraine into NATO, step by step, without saying so. As if Putin wouldn’t notice… We found ourselves facilitating a much less risky response to him than if we had given kyiv membership in NATO, which dared not do so to avoid a major confrontation. One wonders what use NATO is if it ends up endangering those it intends to protect.
This led to Putin’s ultimatum to NATO in mid-December to demand first and foremost a guarantee of non-membership. It also targeted the three Baltic States and even more so Romania and Poland, but without demanding that they leave NATO. He argued that missile launchers that could accommodate conventional or nuclear Tomahawks were already installed in the first and soon in the second, and that these could reach Moscow in 5 minutes.
The solutions sought
Very many proposals were made to avoid the military confrontation which was announced. But it was without success. They all came from the Western world and especially from Harvard scholars. They suggested Ukraine’s neutrality as a model. One pointed out for that the experiment of Finland in the immediate vicinity of Russia and which maintained an almost total independence. Or better yet, the example of Austria has been proposed where, in 1955, the USSR agreed to withdraw its armed forces in exchange for a guarantee of neutrality which is still in force.
Other suggestions that were intended to be more realistic and more acceptable to NATO instead proposed a fifty-year moratorium before reconsidering Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance. These were both troubling and derisory. They postulated the durability of NATO and its promises as if it were an untouchable and unshakeable institution. It is as if NATO were a sacred cow before which we had to bow and which still guaranteed the future of the international order, as if it were not changing.
We will see the price that Ukraine will have to pay and the price that Russia will pay. It already looks terribly heavy on both sides.