NATO’s tortured logic on Ukraine weighs blood and principles

However the question of Ukraine’s possible or probable future membership in the NATO military alliance is settled, the answer involves bloodshed.

Keep President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s nation at arm’s length, as NATO leaders have been doing since 2008 and agreed to continue doing at the summit underway this week in Lithuania, and Ukrainian losses will only stain the country’s golden wheat fields a deeper shade of scarlet.

But admitting into this military club a valiant army whose defence against Russian invaders has been a model and an inspiration for the world would risk spilling the blood of soldiers from Canada and other nations in a land that is far away, even if it is near to our country’s heart.

Despite NATO’s bold, founding vision to be a protective force for good in a world threatened by evil, that is a sacrifice today’s 31 member states appear unwilling to make.

Yes, NATO countries are bankrolling the Ukrainian war effort and providing the bulk of Ukraine’s weapons and military tools, to the tune of more than 154-billion euros ($224 billion Canadian), according to the Ukraine Support Tracker, a project of Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

And they are training Ukrainian soldiers and pilots to use world-leading tactics and equipment, including how to operate and maintain F-16 fighter jets.

If not for this, Ukraine might have fallen to Russia long ago.

And, yes, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doubling down on the dispatch of additional Canadian soldiers to Latvia, which shares a border with Russia, just as other alliance members have troops stationed along NATO’s eastern flank.

But the positioning of troops on peaceful and protected territory is a symbolic and risk-free deployment in the current circumstances. It is like watching a vicious dogfight from between the slats of a backyard fence and warning the instigating mutt over the din of the death-match about the consequences of breaching the property line.

The NATO deployments to guard the alliance’s territory is, to put it in wholly Canadian terms, not standing on guard for thee — Ukraine — but for thyself and thy friends.

The reason for this hesitance is Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states: “an armed attack against one or more of (the member states) … shall be considered an attack against them all.”

The text of the treaty says that countries will assist an attacked member state by taking “such action as it deems necessary.”

In the nearly 17-month Russia-Ukraine conflict — one in which Moscow has already been warned, isolated, sanctioned and shunned — the greatest help for Ukraine, if it were to be granted NATO membership, would come in the form of western boots, weapons and military equipment being dispatched into the fight.

The NATO treaty was forged with the great effort of Lester B. Pearson, Canada’s most famous foreign minister, and later prime minister, in the wake of the Second World War.

U.S. president Harry Truman described it at a signing ceremony in 1949 as a simple document with big goals: “to create a shield against aggression and the fear of aggression.”

“If it had existed in 1914 and in 1939,” he said of the newly founded alliance, “I believe it would have prevented the acts of aggression which led to two world wars.”

Though Russia’s war in Ukraine has fundamentally disrupted the course of world affairs — from finance to food stocks, from the political arena to the sporting arenas — it is not a world war.

But it is something new and particularly high-risk, given Russia’s nuclear arsenal and the high stakes involved if they are employed by a trapped and cornered Vladimir Putin, or an eventual successor.

It is a particularly modern predicament — one the world could scarcely have fathomed at the signing of the NATO Treaty on Aug. 24, 1949, five days before the first atomic weapon test by the Soviet Union kicked off the nuclear arms race in earnest.

Since, we’ve had the Cold War, the decline and dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and NATO’s eastward expansion, which has been as much a source of grievance for Putin as it has been a source of hope for Ukrainians.

In 2008, the country’s then-president, Viktor Yushchenko, argued that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were part of the country’s plan to develop, reform, modernize and join a prosperous Europe.

The U.S. backed Kyiv’s candidacy at the time, but other European countries balked at the idea, fearful of pushing Putin, who himself joined NATO leaders in 2008 to explain that a NATO that includes Ukraine would be seen as a threat to Russia’s national security.

The ongoing war in Europe has given rise to a more pointed question: between Russia and the 31 NATO member states, which side is more afraid of Article 5 being invoked?

Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on a heightened footing in the first days of the war in response to western warnings that, if Ukraine was not defended, a wider conflict with NATO forces could follow. But while Russian missile strikes have devastated Ukraine and struck humanitarian and civilian targets, none have breached the borders where NATO forces stand by, waiting to defend.

Alliance leaders would argue their reluctance to get more deeply involved are simply being prudent, avoiding escalation and containing the conflict. From other angles, the alliance members look like fairweather friends, generous with cash and supplies, but unwilling to put themselves on the line.

U.S. President Joe Biden admitted as much before departing for the NATO summit, saying it would be “premature” to grant Ukraine’s NATO wishes before the war is concluded.

“If the war is going on, then we’re all in war,” he told CNN. “We’re at war with Russia, if that were the case.”

And that is NATO’s red line, the one that will not be crossed.

The announcement Tuesday by NATO that Ukraine will become a member at some undefined moment in the future “when allies agree and conditions are met” gives rise, as Zelenskyy wrote in a pre-emptory tweet, to an “absurd” situation.

“This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia,” he wrote. “And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.”

Zelenskyy’s assessment of the alliance’s offering put NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on the defensive even before he had had an opportunity to try to positively spin the further delay of Ukraine’s 15-years-and-counting wait for membership.

He was emphatic that, in doing away with the requirement for Ukraine to submit to a drawn-out, so-called Membership Action Plan, “there’s never been a stronger message from NATO at any time” about Ukraine’s eventual membership.

“We’re turning this process that has always been two steps into one step,” Stoltenberg.

But instead of waltzing toward peace and security, Ukraine’s march to NATO membership continues without any visible finish-line beyond ill-defined “conditions” about modernizing security and defence capabilities and reducing corruption.

As Olena Halushka, co-founder of the International Centre for Ukrainian Victory, wrote on Twitter: “Why does my nation have to pay such a high price for the right to have a decent life?”

The frustration is palpable and easy to understand.

Harder to comprehend is the logic among the world’s most modern and powerful military forces.

“The most urgent task now,” Stoltenberg said, “is to ensure that Ukraine prevails, because unless Ukraine prevails there is no membership issue to be discussed at all.”

If Russia prevails, in other words, their forces and NATO forces will be nose to nose on a European frontline, and what a bloody mess that would be.

Allan Woods is a Montreal-based staff reporter for the Star. He covers global and national affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan

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