Taking Responsibility

Keeping Ukraine out of NATO permanently hands Russia an enormous victory

“Stand still while I’m hitting you!” was a joke in my family (and I will protect the innocent here): once, a very young relative squealed this to an older brother in a moment of frustration, not realising how hilarious it sounded. In that case, of course, the person doing the hitting was the smaller person and had probably been wound up for hours by an annoying older brother. But the line stays in the mind.

Trump is cross with Ukraine for failing to stand still while Russia hits it. He has maintained a clear and consistent stance of supporting Russia in almost any context and he is annoyed that Ukraine isn’t grateful to him. But Trump is more easily embarrassed than we imagine, so when the full extent of Russia’s most recent wave of attacks on civilian targets in Kyiv became clear, he then started whining and begging. Yes, begging the Russian dictator who appears to exercise extraordinary psychological control over him.

Back in February 2023, I wrote this:

It might not be guaranteed that Trump will let Russia win the war in Ukraine, but all the indications point to this. The debate over whether Trump acts ‘for’ Russia or just sees his and Russia’s interests as being aligned might be for another time. The effect is the same. But Trump has also shown extreme hostility to NATO.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about this - given Trump’s complete and consistent pro-Russian stance going back decades. In January, ahead of the inauguration it was possible to predict with reasonable accuracy what Trump would want to do over a Ukraine ‘peace’ deal:

the Russians would retain the land they have taken and a demilitarized zone would be established along the current battle lines… ‘assurances’ for Moscow that involve promising that Ukraine doesn’t join NATO.

These building blocks of a Trump’s proposed surrender to Moscow deal remain the same: give Russia the land it has occupied in Ukraine, force Ukraine into a defenceless stance over NATO membership. For all that the Europeans (and particularly Starmer) have talked of “boots on the ground”, being a “bridge” to Washington DC and a “reassurance force”, none of this has any meaning when the US plan has consistently been to force Ukraine to surrender to Russia.

The NATO conundrum

In all of this, there is one part of the Russian argument that at least appears worthy of a tiny bit of consideration: as NATO’s first Secretary General Hastings Ismay said, the alliance was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” It succeeded in all of these until this year. Arguably it was too successful with keeping the Germans down, their military (understandably at first, given the history) becoming dysfunctional and ineffective. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the debate over whether former Soviet and ex-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe could join NATO went through many iterations. For some people on the left of politics, it became popular to argue that Russia had been ‘betrayed’ or ‘cheated’ over membership of NATO for the newly liberated countries of Europe. Former Secretary of State James Baker’s line “Not one inch eastward” is frequently repeated to justify the betrayal narrative, both by the Russians and by their (often unwitting) allies in the West, although Baker was talking specifically about NATO in Germany; for Baker’s line to be upheld, Germany would not have been allowed reunification. Other politicians made remarks about NATO not expanding or strengthening, but again, these were not formal commitments, but discussion points in a fluid environment in which Europe’s entire security architecture was being redrawn at the end of the Cold War.

There is always a tendency (which suits Russia, of course) to see this debate as involving two sides: the West, and Russia. The interest of the would-be NATO member is never considered. Why do countries join a defensive alliance? The answer is too obvious to need spelling out. Who seriously argues that Poland has nothing to fear from Russia and had no business joining NATO in 1999? There is a scenario in which no country joined NATO after the end of the Cold War, but that was a scenario in which no country felt threatened by Russia. Again, it’s reasonable to question for example whether the West’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo fed into a Russian sense of humiliation and loss, causing it to increase its aggression to the West whilst expanding its military and security resources. But Russia has always had a false narrative of external threat. Since the end of World War Two, Russia has never been invaded, anywhere, by any country (the only exception to this being Ukraine’s limited operations in recent months, clearly in self-defence).

By contrast, Russia has more or less constantly invaded, occupied and interfered in countries all over the world, but particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, ever since 1945. In addition to broad repression across the continent, specific and major military operations were conducted in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Georgia from 1991 onwards, and Ukraine from 2014. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

For a vivid illustration of the impact of this, look at Ukraine’s own history with NATO. Membership of the alliance did not enjoy widespread support prior to Russia’s 2014 invasion of the country. Support for NATO membership hovered around the 20 per cent mark for much of the early 2000s, before rocketing above 50 per cent in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion. Unsurprisingly these numbers only increased further after the 2022 full-scale invasion. The point here is obvious: support for NATO membership increased in Ukraine as a result of Russian aggression. It did not cause Russian aggression.

The traitor has already done his work

Therefore, Trump’s plan to keep Ukraine out of NATO is a huge bonus to Moscow. But in a way, a bigger act of treason, both to American interests and to Europe’s, has already occurred: Trump has fatally damaged NATO, rendering its value as a defensive alliance completely moot. Who believes the US would do anything to defend a European country against an external threat? The solution to the US keeping Ukraine out of NATO is for Europe to step up to create its own defensive alliances. Since NATO is dying, this must be a priority.