Security Guarantees for Ukraine: Reshaping Russia’s Incentives

OPINION — Peace in Ukraine remains a long way off; even peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are probably at least one to two years away.  But there is one issue we need to think through now so that when the prospect of negotiations becomes real, Ukraine and its friends can use the issue of long-term security guarantees for Ukraine to their advantage.  

Right now, the discussion on eventual NATO membership for Ukraine creates a perverse set of incentives.  Ukraine of course would like the alliance’s protection through membership and the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article V mutual-defense promise, as soon as possible.  But many, if not most of NATO’s 31 members, including the United States, do not want to bring Ukraine into NATO anytime soon—perhaps not until the war is over.  That’s because, taken literally, Article V would likely be interpreted to oblige the alliance to start fighting against Russia from the moment ratification were to happen.  Because Ukraine is under attack, not only along its front lines but in its cities (by Russian drones and missiles), the alliance would quickly find itself at war against a nuclear-armed superpower with all the risks that might run.

As a result, NATO finds itself in a dilemma that creates perverse incentives against someday ending the war.  The prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine, if only possible after the war is over, would give Vladimir Putin a further reason to keep fighting – so as to preclude that very outcome.  Debate continues over the degree to which preventing NATO membership for Ukraine is Putin’s top goal in this war, but few doubt it is near the top of his priority list.

Some strategists have proposed a workaround, interpreting Article V liberally to require some types of military help but not necessarily a comprehensive approach. Indeed, this is how Article V actually reads:  

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area…”

The phrase “such action as it deems necessary” would seem to allow for considerable latitude, and room for varying interpretations, of what kind of military assistance NATO members should provide Ukraine even if and when it were to become an alliance member.

---

Read more Cipher Brief Special Coverage of the Ukraine War: The Ukraine Diaries: Is Ukraine a Vital U.S. National Security Interest by Cipher Brief Expert and former senior CIA Officer Paul Kolbe

---

But such legal and semantics gymnastics are not reassuring to most onlookers.  After all, at the end of the same sentence, Article V states that the military action should serve to “restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area….”  By that standard, piecemeal actions to help Ukraine protect part but not all, of its territory would seem to fall short—unless the Treaty were specifically and formally revised to address this very situation, perhaps with a new article.  But that outcome would seem to create a two-tier alliance, as well as a dilution of Article V’s longstanding credibility and resoluteness.  So, on balance it would seem a questionable idea, far from the best kind of approach.

I have a proposal. 

It is too soon to know if it would help with the situation, since the conditions under which peace talks might someday begin, remain hard to specify at this juncture.  But it could flip the incentives regarding security guarantees for Ukraine, creating a situation in which Putin feels motivated to negotiate sooner rather than later, at least regarding this issue.

---

It’s not just for the President anymore. Cipher Brief Subscriber+Members have access to their own Open Source Daily Brief, keeping you up to date on global events impacting national security.  It pays to be a Subscriber+Member.

---

After close consultation with Ukraine, NATO could announce (at some future, appropriate date) that its key members will surely choose to provide Ukraine with eventual security guarantees–but that they remain agnostic for now on what form those guarantees might take. 

NATO membership is one option. 

Another, as Georgetown professor Lise Howard and I have previously argued, would be the creation of a new mechanism that we call the Atlantic-Asian Security Community, possibly formalized with a treaty that would itself have an Article-V like mechanism.  But the AASC would differ from NATO in several ways:

• It would not require all 31 NATO members to join, though it would require the United States, the largest European NATO members, and the frontline NATO states in the east.  With a smaller number of core members, it could work more nimbly.
  
• It would of course, include Ukraine and could someday, after Putin and Putinism are gone, even include Russia.
  
• It would deploy enough official military trainers on Ukrainian soil that, with or without something akin to Article V, there would be a credible commitment by the United States and other nations that they would fight in Ukraine’s defense in any future war—if for no other reason than to protect their own forward-stationed troops who would be at risk in such a scenario.  In other words, it would create a credible tripwire.

Here’s the real kicker:  NATO and Ukraine could announce that their willingness to negotiate something like AASC would not last forever.  If the war dragged on indefinitely, there might at some point become little alternative to simply offering Ukraine NATO membership (and interpreting Article V in whatever way seemed prudent and realistic at that future juncture). 

If Putin feels so strongly about keeping Ukraine out of NATO but becomes realistic enough to accept that some kind of western security guarantees are now an inevitability (resulting from his own actions), this formulation could help tip him toward favoring earlier, rather than later negotiations—perhaps in late 2024 or early 2025.  His window for keeping Ukraine out of NATO would otherwise soon close.

There’s no way to know if this approach would work, of course.  The security guarantee question is only one of a number that would need to be addressed in any effort at negotiation (with territory perhaps the biggest issue of all).  But finding a different way to offer a security guarantee to Ukraine could help get us out of this potential contradiction that we have built for ourselves, and our Ukrainian friends, on the NATO membership matter.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. 

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field?  Send it to [email protected] for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief