The Risks Of An Alliance With Ukraine

Henry Kissinger once remarked that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Ukraine faces a bloody war of attrition against a determined and well-armed enemy with four times its population. NATO has struggled to provide Ukraine with sufficient ammunition to match Russian artillery, or with enough tanks and other weapons to expel the Russians from its borders. The West lacks the industrial capacity to remedy this dearth. If Ukraine joined NATO today, Article 5 would turn the conflict into a NATO-Russia war with unacceptably high risks of nuclear escalation. A bilateral alliance with the United States implies commitment of U.S. ground forces, with similar risks. EU membership would place the main burden of reconstruction onto the Europeans and would have little strategic impact, but would do little to affect the conflict. A security guarantee by NATO members as part of a peace settlement, though, might have a positive impact.