If Ukraine had been a member of NATO, Russia would never have invaded without running the risk of going to war with the US and the other members of the alliance.
Indeed, Vladimir Putin’s fictitious pretext for annexing Crimea in 2014 and all that has happened since was the apparent overtures that Ukraine was making to join Nato.
He has been willing to give up improved ties with the West to protect what’s left of Russia’s post-Soviet sphere of influence, just like with the 2008 invasion of Georgia.
On the other hand, Western nations that do not want to entice Russia into a larger conflict are reluctant to see Ukraine join Nato for the same reason: they would be obligated under Article 5 to assist Ukraine.
The Nato leaders’ summit this week in Vilnius, a Baltic nation that was formerly a member of the USSR, is representative of this conundrum. The Kremlin has invoked this intrusion on Russian territory as justification for its invasion of Ukraine.
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Ukraine’s NATO Integration
Germany is one of the major Nato nations preparing to block Ukraine’s membership because it believes doing so will lead to war with Russia.
The opposition from Washington is even more significant than that from Germany. The US has mixed feelings about the idea and prefers that the Vilnius summit concentrate on providing security guarantees to the nation rather than hastening its Nato membership, as Britain has suggested.
Joe Biden stated yesterday that he did not believe Ukraine was prepared to join NATO. However, the truth is that for the previous 30 years, keeping Ukraine out of the alliance has not stopped a war.
Despite not breaking up into other nations, given the quantity of weapons NATO has delivered to Ukraine, it is essentially a military conflict through proxy. A timeline for membership would highlight how foolish Putin’s invasion was.
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Source: yahoo.com