I posted a couple of days ago on why NATO's decision not to invite Ukraine into NATO membership was a very sound decision. But also I related why NATO's assurances to Ukraine that an invitation to join will come someday are not realistic. Reuters:
The leaders said in a declaration: "Ukraine's future is in NATO". But they offered no timeline for the process.
"We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met," the declaration said, without specifying the conditions Ukraine needs to meet.
NATO was deliberately vague because its members have no sort of agreement on such conditions. Other reports say that no invitation will be made until after the end of the war. In fact, the NYT reported:
In a communiqué agreed to by all 31 NATO nations, the alliance said that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” and it will be allowed to join when the member countries agree that conditions are ripe — but it did not offer specifics or a timetable. ...
The wording means that Mr. Biden, who declared last week that “Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership,” and like-minded allies had prevailed over Poland and Baltic nations that wanted a formal invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance as soon as the war ends.
Affirming an applicant nation into NATO requires unanimous vote by all member nations. Of course, that is not merely possible, it was done this week by admitting Sweden into NATO. But the tagline of the NYT quote, an "invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance as soon as the war ends," simply tells Russian President Putin to keep fighting as long as he can. And despite the fact that Russian troops have by no means covered themselves in glory in the war, Putin has a vastly larger reservoir of Russians to draw from than Zelensky has Ukrainians.
Therefore, I have to think that by now Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is at least beginning to understand that Ukraine's admission to NATO is this:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called out Donald Trump on Sunday for his outlandish and repeated claims that he could end the country’s drawn-out conflict with Russia in just a day if re-elected.
He [Zelensky] made the statements ... noting tensions between the two former Soviet countries were already ratcheting up during Trump’s years as president—and that he did little to lower the temperature.“It looks as if Donald Trump already had these 24 hours once in his time,” Zelensky said through a translator. “We were at war, not a full-scale war, but we were at war, and as I assume, he had that time at his disposal but he must have had some other priorities.”Zelensky also rejected Trump’s past suggestion that Ukraine cede some of its contested territory to Russia as a peace offering—saying that he rejected such propositions wholeheartedly.“If we are talking about ending the war at the cost of Ukraine—in other words, to make us give up our territories—I think, in this way, [President Joe] Biden could have brought it to an end in five minutes,” Zelensky said.
“But we would not agree,” Zelensky added.
Well, what Zelensky said about Trump (and Biden) is not very arguable. Here is what Trump said last March:
The ex-president said that if the war is not over by the end of the 2024 presidential election, and he were to be reelected to the White House, he would “within one day” have a peace deal in place.
Trump argued that negotiations between himself, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin would be “easy.”
“If it’s not solved, I will have it solved in 24 hours with Zelensky and with Putin, and there’s a very easy negotiation to take place, but I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation,” Trump vowed, not so much as hinting at what his negotiation strategy would be.
Now, that is a remarkably stupid thing for Trump to say, even for, well, Trump. That Zelensky took issue with it, somewhat gently I would add, is unsurprising. But here is where Zelensky either does understand the probable end to the war and is trying hard to call it off, or he does not understand and hence does not have a clue about what is really going on.
Does Zelensky understand that his national goals for the conflict are not automatically the same as US or NATO's national strategic interests? Presently, they coincide closely, but much of our support for Ukraine stems from our disgust for the inhumane, unprovoked aggression it has suffered. However, that motivation will only last so long.
As said in my prior post, I have supported the US and NATO efforts to date in assisting Ukraine diplomatically and materially, with military supplies and weapons. I continue to support such measures.
But I also say that if Zelensky thinks that we will always support him, financially and materially, to fight a Forever War, he will be and should be very, very wrong.
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| Source: The Hoover Institution |
He might also consider one simple question: Would he rather have the terms ending the war dictated to him by Moscow or by Washington and NATO?
