Navrozov: NATO Needs Ukraine More Than Ukraine Needs NATO

"Should Ukraine be in NATO? The issue long predates the war in Ukraine.

"Yet now, after Ukraine's almost incredible decimation of over one-third of the invading force in just a month, now that the whole world is admiring that country's courage and love of liberty, do you not think it is time for that issue to be rephrased?

"Isn’t it a fact that now NATO needs Ukraine, more than Ukraine needs NATO?"

So went a question from the audience the other night at the Addison Cub in London, the exclusive, members-only political discussion venue presided over by the irrepressible Andrew Neil, former editor of The Sunday Times.

The featured speakers that evening were Tom Tugendhat MP, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament, and Vadim Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK.

The question drew cheers from the crowded room.

Peace negotiations between the two nations at war are proceeding apace.

Russia, facing as it is a military debacle of historic proportions, has jettisoned some of its aims — those to do with the grievances, as it happens, which the Kremlin invented to create a pretext for the invasion including "denazification" and "demilirarization" of its neighbor.

Ukraine, in its turn, has promised to make concessions, while declaring that its national sovereignty and territorial integrity are not on the table.

What, then, are these concessions, and what could be the common ground for reaching a peace deal between the two nations at war?

Sobered by military defeat, what the Russian side now wants is for Ukraine to renounce membership of NATO, to promise not to develop nuclear weapons, and to forswear foreign military bases on its soil.

The Financial Times has reported that the Kremlin will even accept Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, provided this status of "neutrality" is agreed, while decisions on Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas may be postponed until a face-to-face meeting between presidents Putin and Zelenskyy.

What nobody would have believed just a few weeks ago is that the Ukrainian side appears willing to make these concessions, which amount to the country’s "neutrality."

No NATO membership for Ukraine, in other words. Instead of joining NATO, whose Article 5 assures the collective security of its member nations, Ukraine wants several countries to serve as individual guarantors of its future safety, including NATO members like Poland.

This is why the question asked at the Addison Club goes to the very heart of the matter.

In the face of Russian aggression, Ukraine believes in the resolve of only certain members of NATO, such as Poland or the Baltic states, to fight a future conventional war in defense of liberty, democracy, and the right to self-determination.

Others, like Turkey or Britain, may be expected to become powerful allies in such a war, as indeed they have done in this one, without actually "putting boots on the ground."

But what would be the behavior of a country like NATO members Belgium or Luxembourg in a future conventional armed conflict?

NATO member Hungary, for instance, has made no secret of its opposition to the aid to Ukraine. Would such countries not weaken NATO resolve to act, diluting any decisive response to Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian, or some yet unknown aggression against another NATO member state?

The truth is that individual nation members of NATO have been of more help to Ukraine in this war than the organization as a whole in attempting to use its conventional and nuclear clout to put pay to Russian aggression.

The Alliance has come off as ineffectual and dithering, little more than yet another bunch of United Nations commissioners spouting pacifist slogans.

On March 31, 2022 Gen. Sir Nick Parker, former commander of the British Army, told the BBC that NATO "has been defeated" by Putin calling its bluff over Ukraine.

The Alliance, he said, should be replaced with a smaller coalition of nations prepared to fight aggression.

"We were unable to stop the Russians trampling all over Ukraine," said Parker, "and now NATO is holding the line at its 2004 expansion, along the line of the Baltic states and Poland and Hungary and Romania. And what it has to do is to defend that line, it's in what in military terms we would call a defensive position. And I don't think it has the capacity to move on to the offensive with its 30 nations all with slightly different views."

Like the European Union, whose effectiveness in winning the wars of the economy has often been called into question over the years, NATO is now beginning to be seen as the military powerhouse that could have prevented Russia’s ongoing attempt to annex Ukraine, but didn’t.

If the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine produce the sort of result President Zelenskyy seems to have in mind, NATO’s chiefs will be forced into a fundamental rethink of its position and role in the world.

Because, as things stand, it is hard to escape the conclusion that NATO needs Ukraine more than Ukraine needs NATO.

Andrei Navrozov, is a writer and a poet. He was born in Moscow in 1956, and is the grandson of playwright Andrei Navrozov and son of  essayist and translator Lev Navrozov.