An Enduring Coalition to Protect Ukraine

In the weeks since July’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Western debate about Ukraine’s long-term security arrangements has fallen into three categories. The country’s most bullish backers want it to become a NATO member and enjoy the alliance’s protection, even though Kyiv did not receive a formal invitation to join at the summit. Their critics respond that admitting Ukraine into NATO will only up the ante and risk all-out war with Russia and that the West should persuade Kyiv to settle the conflict. Seeking a middle ground, a third group proposes that the West should continue providing Ukraine with arms and training its soldiers for the long haul but refrain from making a formal commitment to defend it against future Russian attacks.

But these are not the only options available to Ukraine’s friends and supporters once the current war ends. There is at least one other choice: the West could give Ukraine a formal security guarantee without admitting it to NATO. Crucially, that guarantee would not come from the alliance or involve the United States in any way. Instead, a coalition of European countries, particularly some of Ukraine’s neighbors, would pledge to defend it from future Russian aggression. Their commitment would help deter Russia, and it would also increase the chances of a diplomatic settlement to the conflict by addressing Moscow’s opposition to Ukrainian NATO membership.

IN, OUT, OR IN BETWEEN

Ukraine’s brave and determined fight against Russian aggression has inspired many of its Western backers to demand the country’s formal inclusion in NATO. They portray Ukrainians’ resistance to Russia as an instance of the larger struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, a clash in which cardinal values are at stake. As they see it, the ramifications of denying Ukraine membership in the alliance would reach far beyond its borders. Democrats everywhere would be demoralized and authoritarians, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin, emboldened. Many in this camp contend that Putin’s ambitions extend beyond Ukraine to, at a minimum, Poland and the three Baltic states. And they point to Ukraine’s wartime success as proof that Kyiv will strengthen the alliance rather than become a burden. Unsurprisingly, Ukrainian leaders present an identical brief.

Critics of this argument are legion. Many fear that Ukraine’s membership in the alliance would cause more problems than it would solve. They insist that inducting it into NATO would demonstrate a dangerous disregard for Russia’s repeated warnings that NATO membership is intolerable, pointing out that Putin has described the expansion of the alliance along Russia’s borders as “a direct threat.” Ignoring this Russian redline would, they insist, place NATO and the Kremlin on a collision course and possibly risk nuclear war. The people who hold this view are not just wary of provoking Moscow; they also don’t think that Ukraine warrants such a commitment. The country is not, they contend, important enough to the national security of the United States to justify such risks, particularly because Americans, not their NATO allies, would end up doing the bulk of the fighting and dying required to defend Kyiv.

Those seeking a middle ground propose what effectively amounts to armed neutrality. Ukraine would continue to receive Western arms and military training, with no time limit and regardless of whether the country comes under attack. But it would not be admitted to NATO or receive alternative security guarantees. Many advocates of this arrangement doubt that Ukraine will ever enter NATO, no matter what was said at Vilnius, because its borders with Russia will remain hotly disputed. Some of them also think that Ukraine is not important enough to merit NATO admission (and the accompanying risks). But those supporting this third way do believe that continuous Western support would protect Ukraine’s security because Kyiv has proved that it has the grit and guile to resist Russian aggression—it just needs a more muscular, advanced military. This middle solution, known as the Israel model, would mimic that state’s template of building a highly trained armed forces enabled by a continuing inflow of American armaments and defense technology, even without the treaty-based promise of protection.

COALITION OF THE WILLING 

Given what they have endured, Ukrainians are entirely in their rights to seek protection from future Russian aggression. And given that Ukrainians have been attacked by Russia twice in the last ten years, they can be forgiven for believing that Moscow will be deterred only if Kyiv secures an explicit Western commitment to defend it. Some believe that Russia will not attempt another invasion after the bitter lessons it will have learned from this one, but Ukraine’s leaders are understandably unwilling to make that wager: the consequences of being wrong could prove catastrophic. That reasoning explains Ukrainians’ outrage at those who call for excluding them from NATO.

At the same time, Ukrainians are wary of armed neutrality. During my three trips to wartime Ukraine, I did not hear one good word about this option; Ukrainians appear to see it as a mere consolation prize for failing to gain NATO membership. They do not believe that their admission would make Europe and the United States less safe. Instead, they argue that Article 5 has been erroneously interpreted as a commitment to collective defense using military force. According to these Ukrainians, the article really lets individual alliance members decide how they will respond to an attack—it is not a switch that, once flipped, triggers a military rescue operation. This understanding of the provision helps explain Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s insistence, repeated at the Vilnius summit, that Ukraine cannot settle for anything less than membership.

No matter how hard Zelensky tries, Ukraine’s desire to join NATO may never come to pass. But even if it doesn’t, there is still a way to provide Kyiv with the explicit security guarantee it seeks. A subset of NATO members—those that have been the most vocal in insisting that Ukraine be admitted to the alliance—could jointly provide Kyiv the equivalent of an Article 5 commitment. Poland and the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are the obvious candidates, but others, including Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, could also participate.

Together with Ukraine, a coalition of this sort—which would operate separately from NATO and therefore not include the United States—could raise the risks and costs to Russia of another invasion. (The United States could, and should, still train, modernize, and equip Ukraine’s armed forces.) The coalition of guarantors, all of whom would be NATO countries, would promise not to invoke Article 5 if forced to fight Russia to defend Ukraine. But NATO’s joint defense provision would become operative if Russia directly attacked territory belonging to the coalition’s NATO members. The risk of triggering Article 5 could narrow Russia’s military options and limit the geographic ambit of the war. It could also strengthen the deterrence provided by Ukraine’s guarantors. Moscow, after all, would not want to do anything that could trigger a direct conflict with Washington.

COMING TO TERMS

Of course, no Ukrainian official or military expert would see such a coalition-based guarantee as an acceptable substitute for the protection provided by NATO’s Article 5, and Kyiv will understandably continue its fight for NATO membership. But no matter how badly they might want to join, Ukrainians should begin to at least consider alternatives. At Vilnius, NATO specified that Kyiv must meet all the benchmarks required for membership and reiterated that, to join, it needs to win the approval of all NATO members. Since some of them have been wary of allowing Ukraine into the alliance, Kyiv may in fact be no closer to joining NATO than it was after the 2008 Bucharest summit, when the door to membership was first opened. In the run-up to Vilnius, even the United States said that it opposed providing Ukraine with a formal invitation, let alone a firm commitment and timeline for accession. As a friend who advises the Ukrainian government remarked to me, the result was a summit declaration that amounted to saying, “Ukraine will join NATO when it joins NATO.”

To Ukrainians, this was, quite naturally, disappointing. But if Kyiv mulls over alternatives, it might decide that accepting a different security arrangement could ultimately prove helpful. At some point, Russia might conclude that victory is impossible. Public support for the war within the country is already withering, and protests have become common. Sanctions, once manageable, are beginning to bite. If these trends continue, and if Ukraine’s troops find more battlefield success, albeit not decisive ones, Putin might consider a peace agreement that gives Ukraine back most of the territory it took after February 2022. Even under these circumstances, however, the Kremlin would demand a concession that Putin could present to Russia’s citizens as proof that the war was worth it. A promise by Ukraine not to join NATO could be such a concession.

To safeguard its security, Kyiv could then sign a security pact with some of NATO’s members. This option could also become attractive if Ukraine faces pressure to settle from the West—which is a distinct possibility. Despite heroic efforts and hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid, Ukraine has been unable to achieve a military result that its leaders deem minimally acceptable. Western defense industries are increasingly hard-pressed to meet Ukraine’s incessant military needs, and American officials worry that U.S. military readiness could fall below the levels the president’s military advisers consider safe. In the United States and Europe, public support for pressing on, previously solid, has begun to wane, and NATO’s once remarkable unity has also started to fray. Western states also know that they will have to spend tremendous amounts of money to rebuild Ukraine: a March 2023 World Bank report pegged the cost at $1 trillion. They might want Ukraine to compromise on its NATO aspirations.

COULD THE UNACCEPTABLE BECOME ACCEPTABLE?

Ukraine could, of course, decide to fight on regardless of what its partners want. But with victory elusive and Western support uncertain, even Kyiv might decide that it is better to seek a negotiated and imperfect peace than to continue the war. A coalition-based guarantee would then provide Ukrainians with the assured external protection they need to feel safe, rather than requiring that Kyiv gamble on armed neutrality.

NATO’s European members will doubtless be reluctant to create a new coalition to protect Ukraine. Yet if doing so could end the war, these countries might well decide that it is worth it. NATO’s European members have a self-evident interest in keeping their continent free of upheaval and war, a stake that the United Kingdom, with its centuries of relations to the continent, shares. Moreover, given their wealth and level of technological advancement, European countries cannot credibly claim that they lack the resources to backstop Ukraine’s security, particularly given that Ukraine will emerge from the war as one of Europe’s major military powers. Indeed, Kyiv will become even stronger because it will receive open-ended Western military assistance. And the coalition’s NATO members could take comfort in the fact that if Russia does decide to attack them, the United States will still have to come to their defense.

A coalition-based security guarantee may be a far cry from what Ukrainians yearn for. But in view of the war’s current trajectory and the fact that Ukraine cannot be certain about NATO membership, its leaders may have to accept what they now deem unacceptable. And if Kyiv cannot achieve its ideal military outcome, this coalition could turn out to be the best, most feasible way of ensuring that Russia never again tries to extinguish Ukrainian sovereignty.