2023-04-18 19:26:00
The upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania might be groundbreaking for the course of the Ukraine war. According to one expert, he has the potential to stop Russia.
Munich/Vilnius – The upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania might have a significant impact on the further course of the Ukraine war. Last autumn, Ukraine applied for accelerated accession to the western military alliance, but many members of the defense alliance reacted hesitantly. There are fears that a concrete prospect of accession might provoke Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Political expert Judy Dempsey believes that Ukraine’s invitation to NATO is the right way to stop Russia.
NATO invitation to Ukraine red line?
In the Ukraine war, the delivery of tanks or combat aircraft was long seen as a red line. These former taboos are no more, Leopard tanks and MiG-29 have already arrived in the war zone. Could the taboo on Ukraine joining NATO soon be lifted? Countries like Germany are still reluctant to offer Kiev a roadmap for accession, a so-called Membership Action Plan. Such a move might anger Russia, the concern said.
Moscow launched its war of aggression once morest Ukraine on February 24, 2022, also under the pretext of wanting to prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO member. As a reaction to NATO’s eastward expansion through the accession of Finland in April, the Kremlin stated that it wanted to station nuclear missiles in neighboring Belarus.
In addition, Ukraine’s NATO accession would also bring Article 5 into force, which obliges members of the military alliance to assist their allies in the event of an attack. There are also practical questions. A prerequisite for joining NATO is that the candidate member must not be involved in disputes over borders or international conflicts.
Expert criticizes Angela Merkel’s Ukraine decision in 2008
Political expert Judy Dempsey criticized the fact that Germany and France had so far rejected an offer to join Ukraine and referred to the decision made by then German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Bucharest summit in 2008 green light to invade Georgia in the same year, Ukraine in 2014 and once more in 2022,” argues Dempsey in one Contribution to the Carnegie Europe think tankwhich deals, among other things, with the reduction of global conflicts.
In 2008, the United States supported NATO expansion to include Georgia and Ukraine, while Germany and France opposed it. At the end of that summit there was only a vague promise that one day Ukraine would join the defense alliance. Even at a meeting in November of last years the NATO foreign ministers once more confirmed the “open door” for Ukraine, but without naming a specific timetable. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke of a “long-term perspective.”
‘Mistakes of the past’: Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger change their minds on Ukraine
The upcoming NATO summit will take place from July 11 in Vilnius, the capital of host country Lithuania. This is the right time to “correct past mistakes and take decisive steps towards Ukraine’s NATO membership,” said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba recently.
Apparently, former US President Bill Clinton also believes that decisions on Ukraine in the past were sometimes flawed. The politician recently described the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which he was instrumental in negotiating, as a wrong decision. “I feel personally affected because I [die Ukraine] to give up their nuclear weapons,” Clinton said in an interview with Irish television broadcaster RTE. Russia would not have been able to launch a war of aggression if Ukraine had still had these weapons, the ex-US President suspected.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently changed his mind. For a long time, the 99-year-old had taken a stance once morest Ukraine joining NATO. “Before this war, I was once morest Ukraine’s NATO membership because I feared it might start the very process we are seeing now,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner said via video link at the World Economic Meeting in Davos in mid-January. Under the current conditions, “the idea of a neutral Ukraine no longer makes sense.” Joining NATO would be an “appropriate consequence” of the Russian invasion, Kissinger continued.
Ukraine’s NATO membership “psychological barrier” for some member states?
Political expert Dempsey cited the change of heart by former US decision-makers as proof that Ukraine’s NATO accession is now the right step and warns that “any ambiguity or subterfuge” at the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius will prolong the war and would play into Putin’s hands. The host country Lithuania apparently shares this view.
At the beginning of April, the Lithuanian parliament voted to seek an official invitation to Ukraine to join the western military alliance at the upcoming summit. “We believe that Ukraine will contribute to our security and strengthen NATO,” said Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Zygimantas Pavilionis, explaining the decision.
However, it remains questionable whether all NATO members will support this. “Some very close friends of Ukraine are more afraid of a positive response to the application for NATO membership than of supplying Ukraine with the most modern weapons,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba said in an interview with the political magazine Politico to consider. “There are still many psychological barriers that we have to overcome.” The idea of membership is one of them, Kuleba continued. (bme)
1681868440
#NATO #summit #Expert #requests #NATO #invitation #Ukraine
