Why Ukraine In NATO Could Be A Nuclear Nightmare For America

The Federalist ^ | OCTOBER 04, 2022 | DAN CALDWELL

[SoConPubbie]

It should be a no-brainer for America’s leaders to permanently slam the door on the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO.

In Washington, D.C., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the equivalent of a foreign policy holy sacrament. To listen to many policymakers and foreign policy commentators, you would think NATO is as essential to America as our Constitution, apple pie, or baseball.

Questioning its continued utility in the post-Cold War era — or its further expansion — elicits accusations of being everything from un-American to a Putin stooge. This has made it almost impossible to have a substantive discussion about a military alliance designed to deter the threat of the Soviet Union — a country that hasn’t existed for more than 30 years.

Look no further than the fact that only one senator, Josh Hawley, voted against the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO in June. Hawley rightly questioned whether it was wise to extend America’s security umbrella to two wealthy European welfare states that have been safe and secure as neutral nations for more than 70 years, especially considering other pressing challenges at home and abroad. The bipartisan vitriol hurled at Hawley for his reasonable stance showed that Washington is far from ready to discuss the future of the NATO alliance like adults.

This wasn’t always the case. The United States was a nation founded on a suspicion of permanent alliances, especially with Europe. George Washington in his farewell address advised “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…” and specifically against “interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe.” This approach to alliances guided American foreign policy for most of our history and kept us out of the chaos of 19th-century Europe.

There is good reason for our leaders to revisit the wise words of our first president. Just last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded an accelerated accession to NATO, claiming that Ukraine is already a de facto member of the alliance. Due to the collective defense obligations of NATO members spelled out in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, this could mean committing America’s sons and daughters to fight in an ongoing war with a nuclear-armed Russia.

In a diplomatic cable dispatched in 2008, then-U.S. ambassador and current CIA Director William Burns wrote, “NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an ‘emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia.” For the United States, however, there are simply no vital American interests at stake that warrant a nuclear showdown with Moscow.

Allowing Ukraine to join NATO — and thereby committing America’s full military arsenal to the negligible matter of who governs the Donbas — would significantly raise the possibility of nuclear devastation. It is therefore essential that American policymakers firmly reject Ukraine’s demands to join NATO while slamming shut the “open door” policy offered at the 2008 Bucharest Summit.

Even absent the current conflict, NATO membership for Ukraine would be costly to Americans. According to a report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies prior to the launch of the current Russian invasion, the upfront costs would be up to $27 billion with annual costs totaling up to $11 billion for American taxpayers if Ukraine joins NATO. The United States military would also be required to permanently deploy tens of thousands more troops to Europe, which would further strain a military that is already over-tasked around the world and facing significant challenges with recruiting.

A further expansion of NATO and increased deployment of U.S. troops to Europe would also encourage more European free-riding. Already, rich European states that should have more of a stake in what happens in Eastern Europe are contributing significantly less than the United States to the defense of Ukraine.

Worse, promised defense spending increases by countries such as Germany may not materialize. And why would they? The United States has doubled down in Europe, spending tens of billions of dollars and deploying more troops to Eastern Europe to support Ukraine and reassure nervous allies. None of this has been fixed to greater defense spending by our NATO allies. The Europeans have no incentive to stop treating Uncle Sam like Uncle Sucker.

For these reasons, it should be a no-brainer for America’s leaders to permanently slam the door on the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO. But for many, blind loyalty to NATO trumps common sense.

Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., told Politico he supports Ukraine’s rapid accession to NATO, despite the ongoing war. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while not specifically endorsing NATO membership for Ukraine, did say she supports a “security guarantee” for the country, which could be granted through NATO. Even the Biden administration, while not endorsing rapid accession to NATO, did keep the door open for their membership at a later date.

American leaders should put the interests of the American people first — and certainly before those of an alliance that long ago outlived its original purpose. Putting Ukraine under America’s security umbrella through NATO would lead to disastrous results. Beyond the risk of a nuclear conflict, spending tens of billions of dollars to expand NATO to Ukraine or other European countries is foolish during a time of record inflation, a $30 trillion national debt, and the rising threat of China in Asia.

The American people are owed a much more serious evaluation of NATO and its continued utility than the emotional nostalgia that dominates the discourse in policymaking circles.

[caww]

Actually Putin's pretty much accomplished what he set to do from the get go. He's got his land-bridge to secure the border and his port areas. Although he could certainly landlock Ukraine from any access to ports etc. he won't do that because he wants a functional Ukraine in trade etc. He doesn't want the nation itself to basically babysit.

[BroJoeK]

DesertRhino: "(1) Uke militias and Uke army were already massing for a massive assault on the Donbass, (2) NATO was extending an invitation, (3) the Ukes were prepping to go nuclear and (4) to also attack Crimea."

Those are complete lies, because:

• 1) Why would Ukraine stage a "massive assault" on itself?

• 2) Ukraine first applied for NATO membership in 2008, NATO's response was: first do Membership Action Plan, then we'll talk.

• 3) There's no evidence of Ukrainian nukes -- just the opposite, Ukraine gave up its stockpile of nukes in exchange for Russia's worthless promise not to invade!!

• 4) Again, why would Ukrainians attack themselves in Crimea, it makes no sense, must be a total Russian propaganda lie.

DesertRhino: "So his [Putin's!] choice was do nothing and globalists win.
Or fight and globalists still do ok, but at least he has kept them away.
He [Putin!!!] learned the lesson of Munich and knew the expansionist dictatorship could not be stopped by appeasement."

Still more lying propaganda -- worthy of a Goebbels or Hillary Clinton (but I repeat myself).
You turn the reality of an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine into a justified defensive response by Russia to Ukrainian "aggression".
In your delusional world it's Russia playing the role of peace-seeking Chamberlain at Munich, and Ukrainians who are unjustly threatening to invade their neighbors.

Just goes to prove that not all the American delusional insanity is among Democrats.
But... maybe I'm assuming to much here?

[Rockingham]

The odd thing about giving your word as a person or a country is that people expect you to keep it even when it is not “legally binding.” The US and the UK and NATO correctly regard their various security promises to Ukraine as both morally and strategically compelling. Putin is an untrustworthy, dangerous thug and it is in the interest of the US and NATO to stop him and Russia.

[DesertRhino]

Yeah, you are assuming too much. Try to keep up.

Each thing I said is documented and I don’t care too much about changing your backwards mind, but no, they wouldn’t be invading themselves. They had been shelling the Donbass areas for 8 years and were massing forces to assault them and reconquer them. They had opted out of the 2014 coup and have been under ethnic cleansing and nazi artillery attacks since that time.

And yes, in April of 2021 Zelinsky announced they were exploring getting nukes.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/16/ukraine-may-seek-nuclear-weapons-if-left-out-of-nato-diplomat

They announced they intended to attack Crimea, and we and the Brits sailed warships 3 miles off of Sevastopol claiming Ukraine gave us permission.
Last fall when Putin we pushing hard for negotiations, the centerpiece was the implementation of Minsk II, and an assurance that Ukraine was not going to be admitted to NATO. Blinken responded the intent was to support ukraine militarily and that the NATO door was open.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60145159

And no, the Munich analogy was DC and the EU as the aggressive expansionist empire. The Ukes are just useful idiot pawns. Put learned the lesson of Munch that you cannot appease such people and knew it was true with is after all the appeasing he tried with us. So he chose the military option.

You’re living in the past.

[DesertRhino]

Yet, the US didn’t feel it needed to keep it’s word about not moving NATO one inch east after German reunification.
Keeping our word, even when not legally binding, only matters when it suits a DC or London strategic goal.

[DesertRhino]

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

Declassified in 2017, yes, Baker said “not one inch eastward”.

[caww]

Well that doesn't work for our interests as I don't think we should be completely supporting Ukraine monetarily nor militarily. It's not OUR battle and should never have been. Ukraine's security doesn't do a dang thing for our countries security - not even a little.....in fact it's robbing our country from where our money should otherwise be going right here in the USA.

Secure OUR border - build our infrastructure not Ukraine's - defend our borders from the invasion that's happening......and even if all these didn't need to be addressed Ukraine's milked every country it can get it's fangs in - so no I don't support this conflict even a little......and they've never done a dang thing for us!

[Rockingham]

The country to which that informal spoken promise was made -- the Soviet Union -- expired. The two largest successor states -- Russia and Ukraine -- have distinctly different views of whether Baker's promise has any meaning now.

Efforts by Russia and the US to resolve the issue have been made impossible by Putin's thuggery and maximalist demands that Russia be accorded a sphere of influence roughly equivalent to what the Soviet Union had. Accepting Putin's demands would negate the independence and sovereignty of half of Europe.

[Rockingham]

Under Putin, Russia is a menace to the US, to our allies in NATO, and to America's interests in Europe. Aiding Ukraine has helped diminish that threat by weakening both Putin and Russia.

And -- as surprising as it may seem -- we have the resources to aid Ukraine and to protect out borders and enforce our immigration laws. Indeed, with the threat from Russia diminished, the US enjoys a net improvement in our security.

[caww]

We’re just going to disagree as “menacing” as Russia might at times be to us we’ve got bigger problms to contend with left unaddressed because our money is funding not just Ukraines military but their teachers, police and a host of other daily responsibilities of their government for them. ....Further I don’t see our funds doing what your saying they should be doing right here in the US.

I will also add I don’t see Russia doing anything our goverrnment and Eu governments don’t also do....or have done in the past. This is why other countries see the US as equally meanacing if not in some cases moreso than Russia.

What we’re doing in Ukraine has not made me have any sense of being more secure as you stated, quite the opposite as it also has Europe and other countries.

[Rockingham]

Russia has a large military and a stockpile of some 3,000 to 6,000 tactical nuclear weapons, numerous delivery systems, and a doctrine that readily permits their use. That is enough to alarm Russia's neighbors and make them seek the US as a security partner.

At the strategic level, Russia regards the United States as its principal enemy. After all, without US backing, NATO would be hard pressed to block Russian expansion.

Since Europe in the aggregate is a massive economic and technological power and the cultural heartland of Western civilization, we fought two World Wars and the Cold War and formed NATO for the sake of Europe's freedom and security. And with NATO and Europe's security at stake in Ukraine's fight against Russian invasion, our interests are also at stake in that fight. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails, Europe's security and freedom and ours improve considerably.

You are, of course, not obliged to agree with any of that, but I hope that I have made a clear enough case to allow you to understand why and NATO we are helping Ukraine.

[BroJoeK]

DesertRhino: "They had been shelling the Donbass areas for 8 years and were massing forces to assault them and reconquer them."

Sure, if by "they" you mean Russians.

DesertRhino: "They had opted out of the 2014 coup and have been under ethnic cleansing and nazi artillery attacks since that time."

Again, "they" means Russians living in Ukraine who, we're told, invited Putin to invade Ukraine in 2014 and ever since showered their non-Russian neighbors with artillery attacks.
The number of civilians killed in Donbas attacks -- from 2016 to 2021 -- averaged about one per week.
In 2021 the number of civilians killed in the Donbas averaged two per month -- not exactly "ethnic cleansing" among a population of circa 8 million ethnic Russians (17%) living in Ukraine.

As for alleged "nazis", it's a meaningless word but typical of communist propagandists who claim their fellow socialists fascists are "right wing".

DesertRhino: "And yes, in April of 2021 Zelinsky announced they were exploring getting nukes."

There's no reason to doubt that every country which is non-nuclear has "explored getting nukes."
"Explored" means nothing more than studied the question.
Here's what's really going on:

"In July 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that his country had the right to defend Crimea using nuclear weapons,[22] and in March 2015 president Putin said that during the invasion of Crimea he had been prepared to put nuclear forces on alert.[23]
Around the same time, a Russian foreign ministry official said that Russia had the right to deploy nuclear arms to the peninsula, which is internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory.[24]

On April 15, 2021, Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Yaroslavovych Melnyk told Deutschlandfunk radio that if Ukraine was not allowed to become a NATO member, his country might have to reconsider its status as a non-nuclear weapon state to guarantee its defense.[25][26]

In February 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky renewed such sentiments, suggesting that Ukraine would potentially view the [1994] Budapest Memorandum as invalid should its security guarantees not be met.[27]"

So, threatened by Russia with Nukes in Crimea, Zelensky says he might reconsider if the 1994 Budapest Memorandum is still valid.

DesertRhino: "And no, the Munich analogy was DC and the EU as the aggressive expansionist empire.
The Ukes are just useful idiot pawns. "

A Ukrainian decision to voluntarily join NATO does not make them part of anybody's "empire".
It does make Ukrainians fellow European allies under the protection of NATO's security guarantees of sovereignty against the threats & aggressions of rabid dictators like madman-Putin.

DesertRhino: "You’re living in the past."

In trying to restore the old Russian Empire, Putin & you are living in the past.
It won't happen, not now, not ever again.

Get used to that.

[BroJoeK]

Rockingham: "The country to which that informal spoken promise was made -- the Soviet Union -- expired. The two largest successor states -- Russia and Ukraine -- have distinctly different views of whether Baker's promise has any meaning now."

Baker made no such promise.
The issue in 1990!! was stationing foreign NATO troops in East Germany, which US Secretary of State Baker seems to have said would not happen.
There was no discussion about Eastern European countries joining NATO, period.

"Gorbachev met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl the day after the meeting with Baker.
According to Kramer's research, the subject of German unification was more prominent on the agenda than it had been with Baker.
'Gorbachev did not seek any assurances about [NATO enlargement] and certainly did not receive any,' Kramer wrote...

"Ten years later, [2009] in an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow.
'Many people in the West were secretly rubbing their hands and felt something like a flush of victory -- including those who had promised us: 'We will not move 1 centimeter further east,' ' he was quoted as saying.

Gorbachev later appeared to reverse himself, saying the subject of enlargement in fact never came up in 1989 or 1990.
'The topic of "NATO expansion" was never discussed; it was not raised in those years.
I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility.
Not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist in 1991,' he told the newspaper Kommersant in October 2014."

[caww]

I understand the sides of the equation but I don’t agree how they’re going about settling matters because there’s far too many parties entangled with Ukraines mess....and it is Ukraines mess regardless who they allow to manage their affairs. They certainly don’t handle their own affairs without being in constant conflict within and without...and because they don’t they suck in and create problems for the world.

[Rockingham]

Ukraine is a work in progress but better than you suggest. The current conflict aside, Ukraine improved greatly over the last decade, slowly reforming and becoming better organized, more free, and less corrupt. This is a familiar pattern in central and eastern Europe as the ills of the Soviet era fade and US and Western practices and policies are increasingly adopted.

Ukraine also reformed its military over the last several years by following the US and Western military model of a strong NCO corps, professional soldiers instead of conscripts, flexible, decentralized decision-making and nimble tactics, and better weapons. That is a major reason why Russia got such a nasty surprise when Putin ordered an invasion.

I am confident that when Ukraine wins, reforms will progress even more rapidly. Like the US after WW II, an entire generation will try to make sense of their struggle and sacrifice by making a better country.

[caww]

Unfortunately they did not make any advances without enormous amounts of funding from other countries and great loans from the IMF etc. Not to mention how much of that went into the pockts of their politicians and oligarchs. Which is “the familiar pattern” for Ukraine. It’s not surprising that everything in Ukraine still runs on bribes and theft....and perfectly acceptable as the way things work in Ukraine for most there.

As for their military it’s “foreign” built - they have not done that on their own. You make it sound like Ukraine is nothing more than an extension of the US. - which actually isn’t too far from the truth. And that I would never sign up to support. It’s not our responsibility to build nations.

[Rockingham]

It may look like Ukraine is being indiscriminately showered with cash, but those international grants and loans come with conditions attached that aim at curbing bribery, improving governance, and so on. Over time, those have an effect. Over the last decade, Ukraine's rating in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index showed slow but measurable improvement.

As for weapons, although Ukraine now looks to the US and NATO for weapons, they like to adapt them to local practices and conditions. During the Soviet era, Ukraine developed a significant technical and industrial base. Indeed, until the current conflict with Russia, Ukraine supplied a lot of essential components to Russia's arms industry.

As for nation building, Ukraine is already a nation in the European model and looks to European neighbors for examples of what they want to become. Ukraine is not Afghanistan.