China and Ukraine’s membership in NATO
My recent advocacy trip to Washington confirmed that NATO summit in July 2024 is not yet a priority for U.S. officials. It is not discussed even at the level of expert proposals, for example, regarding the intermediate stage of Ukraine’s membership, when Article 5 of the Washington Treaty on Collective Defense will apply only to the territory controlled by Kyiv. It is increasingly common to hear that the acceptance of our country into NATO will depend on the political situation in the USA, the course of the presidential campaign (whether it will be beneficial to President Biden or not), the geopolitical distribution of forces, unity in the Alliance, the state of affairs on the battlefield, in the Russian Federation and even attempts at a peaceful settlement of the war. In the end, Ukraine’s invitation may become the subject of bidding…
Even less is said about the Chinese factor in this process. After the meeting between Biden and Xi in San Francisco and the demonstrably feigned warming of relations between the rivals, the latter may also join in blackmailing the West and blocking our movement toward membership in various ways.
Will China influence NATO’s decision on Ukraine at the Washington summit or later — at the subsequent stages of membership acquisition?
Recently, at a meeting, an expert close to the Foreign Ministry said that China would not block Ukraine’s accession to the EU because it does not contradict its economic plans. NATO is a completely different matter. Beijing is categorically against our membership in the Alliance, because one day Ukraine may fight against China on the side of the United States. And the unique experience of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will add us weight and tools of influence, as experts have already written about.
The decisions of the last NATO summits since London 2019 show the perception of the Russian Federation as a threat, and China as a challenge. In particular, Article 23 of NATO Vilnius Summit Communiqué states: “The declared ambitions and coercive policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) challenge our interests, security and values. China relies on a wide range of political, economic, and military tools to increase its global influence and power, while remaining opaque about its strategy, intentions, and military buildup. NATO member states are the target of PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations, its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation, which undermine the security of the Alliance. China seeks to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, strategic materials and supply chains. It uses economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and strengthen its influence. The PRC is seeking to undermine the rules-based international order, particularly in the space, cyber and maritime spheres.”
Therefore, China will naturally oppose NATO and the involvement of new members, as it considers it a tool for projecting US regional influence.
China itself has never hidden its ambitions for global dominance. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his book “The Grand Chessboard”: “Due to history and geography, the Chinese will be increasingly insistent and even emotionally driven by the need for the final unification of Taiwan on the mainland. Geography is also an important factor because it makes China interested in an alliance with Pakistan and in establishing a military presence in Burma. In both cases, India becomes a geostrategic target.”
At the end of August, when I was in New Delhi for an international conference, I often heard from high-ranking officials that the only effective organization with deterrence tools that is taken seriously in Asia is NATO. Therefore, it is important that the Alliance becomes global and has deterrence mechanisms for the authoritarian leaders of the Axis of Evil.
It is obvious that China has intensified the formation of global infrastructure — from active work in the SCO and BRICS to increasing its economic presence in Latin America. China is preparing to take the lead instead of the USA and form its own agenda. Hence, it is important to monitor the situation now and take into account these “under-the-table games”. After all, it is not only Russia that will block our movement towards membership in every possible way, including through “1.5 track diplomacy”.
Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine clearly shows that the world’s evil works very well together. Are global dignity and freedom capable of unity and proactive action instead of misunderstanding and belated decisions against the game of pre-emptive action, including strategic corruption used by dictators to make Western elites forget about values and get confused in their own interests)?
How to convince NATO to be more decisive after all its wrong decisions (e.g., those made at the Bucharest summit in 2008)?
Ukraine should offer security guarantees to Europe. I wrote about this together with Canadian researchers in a separate article about 10 reasons to act outside the box.
If NATO is not ready to guarantee Ukraine’s security, Kyiv should provide security guarantees to European countries in case of a Russian attack.
In circumstances where our partners lack the leadership truly to help Ukraine win, we must take unprecedented steps. We need to generate initiatives that break the molds.
Skeptics will immediately ask: why do we or NATO countries that already have collective defense need this? Here are some simple reasons.
Firstly, Ukraine will show that it is already part of the West, not a gray area.
In the war of totalitarian regimes against democracies, we are on the side of free societies. We are ready to share our fate with our partners if they are in trouble, so that we can fight together for a common victory.
This is a decisive step to counteract the skeptics of Kyiv’s Euro-Atlantic integration, who still do not want to see us as a member of either NATO or the EU and believe that it is possible to appease Moscow by keeping Ukraine in a buffer zone.
Secondly, we will convince them that we are not only seeking to hide under the umbrella of protection at the expense of high risks to Western societies, but also that Ukrainians are ready to defend them. We have gained unique experience in the use of unmanned aerial systems, having hundreds of specialized units and strike groups, as well as experience in implementing defense innovations.
Joining NATO, which we are seeking, will ultimately mean that we will be obliged to defend our allies. If we want the citizens of NATO countries to make sacrifices for Ukraine, we must also declare our own readiness.
In the Sustainable Peace Manifesto, the authors clearly stated that Ukraine has the right not only to demand justice for the crimes committed by Russia, but also to receive guarantees of sustainable peace in the future. Its basic prerequisites are Ukraine’s membership in the EU and NATO. The Great War nullified fears that NATO expansion could worsen relations with Russia, as they had reached absolute zero as a result of Russia’s unilateral actions.
An important step in this direction took place in 2022 with the invitation of Sweden and Finland. The precedent of rapid accession without the long-term preparation tool developed for peacetime — the Membership Action Plan — can be applied in the future, especially in the context of Ukraine’s long experience of implementing annual cooperation programs since 2009.
Ukraine’s invitation is only the first symbolic step on the long road to membership. The allies should not be afraid of the automatic application of Article 5 on collective defense, and Ukraine is ready to prove that it will become a worthy member of NATO. Instead, the risks of Ukraine’s non-accession due to delayed decisions are worse for everyone’s security.
Currently, our priority task is to mobilize expert communities and diasporas — not only Ukrainian ones — in key countries so that support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO and the invitation to Washington becomes even stronger than it was this year. Let me remind you that according to a study by the New Europe Center, 64% of respondents in France, 58% in the Netherlands, 52% in Germany, 52% in the United States, and 50% in Italy supported inviting Ukraine to NATO Vilnius Summit. That is, societies have outgrown the leaders who lead them
During the Vilnius Summit, our “T-shirt diplomacy” with the inscription “Ukraine in NATO” (advocacy campaign “Ukraine — the 33rd NATO member”) attracted attention. We are currently distributing socks “Ukraine-NATO-NOW”. We need a mass movement about the importance of an invitation to Ukraine not only in NATO countries, but also in Japan, Australia, and Taiwan.
A formal invitation is a serious commitment. It will show that Ukraine is not viewed as a buffer or gray zone, and will also speed up the end of the war and Ukraine’s victory. This is the lowest-cost option for both Ukraine and NATO.
The invitation will serve as a geopolitical signal not only to the Putin regime, but also to all other elites, just as it did with the EU candidate status. We are moving towards an equal partnership. As a powerful security contributor with its armed forces and unique experience, Ukraine will strengthen the Alliance and make it a global player in curbing authoritarianism and effectively protecting democracy.
This is also an important signal for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. More than 90% of Ukrainians support Euro-Atlantic integration, and our best defenders are giving their lives for it. We are not asking the Alliance to send its troops to Ukraine. However, along with increasing military aid packages and intensifying exercises, an invitation to join NATO will become part of the victory strategy. Because a victory of Ukraine is also a victory of the Alliance.
Before the summit in Vilnius, US President Joe Biden stated that Ukraine was not ready for membership in the Alliance because it had not yet reached the required level of democracy and fight against corruption. NATO should think first and foremost about its own security. We are facing the challenges of World War III, because the current level of support for Ukraine is insufficient, and Russia has adapted to the realities of war. Now it is about the survival of democracy. With such a gradual approach, Ukraine cannot win the war, and an invitation to NATO is the lowest-cost solution to victory.
Over-fulfilling reforms for the sake of partners’ determination
We recognize that we need to implement reforms. Some of them are outlined in the Adapted ANP, which was recently supported in Brussels. It has a plan for important transformations for the whole of 2024, not just for the Washington summit. There is another document — the American list of reforms.
However, it is unrealistic to fulfill all these lists before the NATO Summit. The implementation of many important tasks — for example, the work of 300 detectives in the NABU —requires not only political will, institutional and human resources capacity, but also, above all, a quick end to the war so that the best detectives can return to the NABU and prosecutors to the SAPO.
For this, we need an invitation to join NATO as an additional lever of civil society’s influence on the course of reforms, as a motivation to win faster, and as a powerful signal to the aggressor state that the West is not with us “as long as it takes,” but is doing everything to bring our common victory closer. And this victory is a great contribution to the confrontation with the axis of evil, which has been scaling up since the mistaken decision of the NATO summit in 2008 not to grant MAP to Ukraine and Georgia.
Material was prepared within the framework of the project “Manifesto for Sustainable Peace — A Strategic Approach” with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.