Ukraine and Georgia have made clear their desires to become full members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in order to ensure their security. But it is precisely this aim that guarantees their insecurity.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his red line very clear to both Ukraine and Georgia: Drawing closer to NATO and the West will incur Russia’s wrath. Fiona Hill, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, explained at a recent Reuters event in Washington that Putin moved into eastern Ukraine in 2014 because the Russians felt they had to intervene. Moscow had warned Kiev numerous times about moving into the West’s sphere of influence and, specifically, signing the free trade agreement with the European Union (EU).
The University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer posits that Russia, in fact, had no intention of invading Ukraine and taking Crimea. There was virtually no evidence before the start of the crisis in late February 2014 that the Russians were thinking about moving military forces westward toward that goal, said Mearsheimer at an Atlantic Council event, and there is no evidence the West thought Russia would take Crimea.
But, explains Mearsheimer, the Russians made clear in April 2008 – at the end of the Bucharest Summit, where NATO heads of state declared they would bring Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance in the future – that expanding the security alliance to Ukraine and Georgia would be a step too far. As Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution against Russia-aligned Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych took hold in early 2014 and it looked like Ukraine would sign the free trade agreement with the EU, Russia followed through with its promise.
Similarly, the Russians moved into Georgia in 2008 to “teach a lesson,” says Hill, namely, that Russia would remain committed to its red line vis-à-vis NATO expansion. “The Russians are playing a game they’ve played for a very long time,” Hill says. That is, they are always trying to figure out how Russia can dominate the region, due to its inherent insecurity as a multi-regional power.
Steven Hall – a former senior CIA officer and Cipher Brief expert – explains that back in 2008, “While Georgia was not a NATO member, it is clear that Russia was not comfortable with Tbilisi’s movement – politically, economically, and socially – towards the West.” He continues, “More recently, the annexation of Crimea and direct military support of Moscow-sponsored separatists in eastern Ukraine, both clear violations of international law, represent the next step forward in Russian regional planning. Putin’s strategic goal is returning Russia to great power status, but how far he will go in this attempt remains unclear.”
This makes signaling very important. The West has to be very careful and clear about what we are willing to accept and where our red line is drawn, says Hill. NATO and the West should not be thinking about how to change Russia, she says, but rather, what kind of relationship the West wants with Russia.
This is where the problem lies: The West’s red line and minimal relationship requirements for Russia are ambivalent at best. The U.S., for example, has shown it is not willing to fight for Georgia and Ukraine, says Mearsheimer. According to him, that is because those countries are vital to Russian interests – both politically and economically – whereas they are not vital to U.S. or Western interests.
Yet, at the same time, the U.S. continues to support Georgian and Ukrainian NATO membership, which would, in effect, force the U.S. to commit to fighting for them via Article 5, NATO’s collective defense mandate.
Russia maintains its red line, while the West maintains its ambiguousness – stating that it wants Georgia and Ukraine to be a part of NATO but stopping short of offering full membership. This led former NATO commander and Cipher Brief expert Admiral James Stavridis to recently call Georgia and Ukraine the “losers” coming out of the Warsaw Summit, where NATO heads of state met in July.
“Given these disputes with Russia [that is, the Ukraine and Georgia invasions and Russian occupation of territory], the likelihood of full membership seems quite distant, and the Warsaw summit did not offer much in the way of hope for their goals. While the alliance provided platitudes about an ‘open-door’ policy and pledged continued military cooperation, there is not much of a glimmer of actual membership,” writes Stavridis in Foreign Policy.
Ukraine and Georgia have a different take on the summit. Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze tells The Cipher Brief that after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and then President Yanukovych’s fleeing the country, there was “renewed impetus to our cooperation with NATO [and] since then, our relationship has been developing pretty extensively in different spheres – both militarily and in non-military spheres.”
She also says that in the documents coming out of this latest NATO summit, there is reference to the decisions of previous summits, including the commitment to offering Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership when they are ready. “Ukraine is conducting the internal reform that is needed to be eligible to at some point apply for membership,” says Klympush-Tsintsadze.
Similar optimism was heard from Georgia. Ambassador Alexander Maisuradze, Georgia’s permanent representative to NATO, told The Cipher Brief after the Warsaw Summit, “The commission adopted a Joint Statement expressing strong support of Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as defining new ways of practical cooperation to increase Georgia’s defense capabilities, interoperability, and resilience and to help Georgia, an aspirant country, progress in its preparations towards membership.”
Yet the timelines for potential membership offers to both countries remain vague, and if the alliance’s stated goal of “deterrence” of Russian aggression is to hold, provoking the Russian bear by expanding NATO to Georgia and Ukraine would likely negate this aim.
Kaitlin Lavinder is an international producer at The Cipher Brief.
