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Benjamin H. Friedman is Policy Director at Defense Priorities. Christopher McCallion is a Fellow at Defense Priorities.
At this week’s NATO Summit in Vilnius, the alliance kicked the can down the road once more by inviting Ukraine to join in the future, while denying it entry in the immediate term. Ukraine and its most ardent supporters, meanwhile, have demanded the alliance offer it membership, or at least a clear path to it.
More cautious leaders, like French President Emmanuel Macron, have proposed to offer Kyiv vaguer security guarantees instead — meaning some type of promise to protect Ukraine if it is attacked. And despite stating that Ukraine is not yet ready for inclusion in NATO, United States President Joe Biden insists on maintaining an open door for its membership in the future.
All these proposals are dangerously misguided. The U.S. should not offer Ukraine security guarantees of any sort — and certainly not NATO membership — now or when the war is over.
The case for offering Ukraine protection seems simple: Russia attacked Ukraine when it lacked allied protection, and it has never attacked a NATO country. But simple as it is, this argument fails for multiple reasons.
First, it fails to consider that promises to protect Ukraine provide no benefits to American security, and could even undermine it. It also ignores how Washington’s lack of interest in protecting Ukraine — demonstrated by its refusal to engage directly in the present war — would make it hard for Moscow to believe the U.S. would actually do so in the future. And finally, it discards how the West’s past feints at protecting Ukraine contributed to Russia’s decision to invade in the first place.
Extending security guarantees to Ukraine would thus create the worst of all worlds: The country might think it has protection while actually lacking it, and it would remain a Russian target precisely because of this phony protection. This would make a future war more likely, endangering both Ukraine and the U.S.
The simplest reason the U.S. should not make security guarantees is that they are needlessly risky. NATO membership, or even U.S. security guarantees, hang on a threat to fight a war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. That means threatening to start a nuclear war that would be mutual suicide for what are, at most, peripheral interests — and in exchange for taking that colossal risk, the U.S. would gain nothing.
We are often told that defending Ukraine is vital to U.S. or European security, either because its defeat would enable further Russian aggression, or because its conquest would shatter the norm of territorial integrity — the sanctity of sovereignty — that keeps the world stable.
Neither claim is remotely compelling.
The idea that Russia would use Ukraine to attack further into Europe is mostly an argument for Europeans to bolster their defenses — not the U.S. Moreover, Russia’s terrible performance in the war makes the idea of it attacking Poland, let alone Western Europe, almost laughable.
The norm of territorial integrity, meanwhile, is not so brittle that the U.S. must defend Ukraine. Russia has been punished so severely for its invasion that few would be foolish enough to emulate its example. On the contrary, it has provided something akin to a global public service announcement about the perils of aggression.
The U.S. and its NATO allies have thus far avoided fighting directly for Ukraine precisely because they lack an interest vital enough to risk nuclear war, and this fact makes it implausible that the U.S. will come to Ukraine’s defense in a future scenario. As a result, there is little the U.S. and its NATO allies can, or will, do to actually guarantee its security — whatever they may say. Such threats, even if offered in the form of NATO membership, will lack credibility. And though they may give Russia pause, they will ultimately be unconvincing and unlikely to act as a deterrent.
Believable threats to fight and die are not produced by pieces of paper or bluff. They are produced by vital interests and the evident capability to act on them.
Because the Cold War stayed cold, many seem to forget that U.S. promises to defend European countries like West Germany — which mattered far more to its security than Ukraine — had severe credibility problems. Mutually assured destruction meant posing the question of whether an American president would actually trade New York for Berlin. Western analysts labored with various schemes and doctrines to answer this without ever really succeeding. It was mutual self-restraint that kept them from having to provide a decisive response.
Today, it is nearly impossible to see how Washington could commit to such a suicidal action for Ukraine. Additionally, making empty threats might only remind Russia that other U.S. commitments, like those to the Baltics, are similarly dubious.
What Ukraine wants from Vilnius is to receive real security guarantees, but what it’s likely to get are fake ones, which will be worse than useless. It will keep Ukraine a target. The war itself is testament to that, as it seems quite unlikely this conflict would have occurred absent Russia’s belief that Ukraine was on its way to security integration with NATO, violating its “brightest of redlines,” as CIA Director Bill Burns put it while U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
Of course, saying this does not excuse Russia’s aggression, but it does make its repetition predictable — if the West is to also repeat its policy of keeping the door open to fighting for Ukraine someday. Russia might not necessarily believe such proffered protection will be real, but it may still view it as threatening to its perceived interests, particularly if NATO troops or infrastructure were to be deployed to Ukrainian territory.
Moreover, holding out the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, or getting future security guarantees of another sort, would encourage Russia to keep the war going. In fact, providing security guarantees now would be even worse, forcing the U.S. to either ignore its commitment and undermine other alliances, or fight for Ukraine and spark an immediate nuclear crisis.
A more durable solution, instead, would be to make Ukraine a porcupine rather than a protectorate.
Despite the fact that it is unwilling to fight for Ukraine, the U.S. has shown great eagerness to arm it. Washington should continue this form of military support while agreeing to take Ukraine’s accession to NATO off the table, making Ukraine a heavily armed neutral.
This would be the best way to vitiate Kyiv’s security concerns vis-à-vis Moscow, as well as Moscow’s security concerns vis-à-vis NATO — both of which, whether one likes it or not, are necessary for an enduring peace. Ukraine has already shown its ability to use Western military equipment and training to impose an enormous cost on Russian forces. A neutral Ukraine would remain one of the most capable armies in Europe.
Having demonstrated it will not fight for Ukraine, the U.S. can no longer meaningfully promise to do so — even through NATO. So, rather than yet more empty promises, which have done Ukraine no favors, Washington should continue offering the kind of assistance it has so far been generously providing. When it comes to fighting off Russia, Ukraine ultimately has no choice but to secure itself, and it has already proven it can succeed without phony guarantees.
