Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington, D.C., this week. He’s trying to convince President Joe Biden to give Kyiv more support in the face of the looming shadow that is next-door Russia.
Zelensky met with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday and will sit down with Biden at the White House on Wednesday. It’s a bilateral meeting that the Biden administration pushed back from earlier in the year.
Zelensky comes bearing requests. He remains miffed that Biden prioritized Washington’s bilateral relationship with Germany, the economic heavyweight of Europe, over the campaign to kill the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It’s an $11 billion project that allows Russia to ship natural gas deliveries without crossing through Ukraine. This means that Kyiv could be deprived of $2 billion to $3 billion in transit fees that it scoops up every year. But Biden weighed these considerations and rightly decided that sanctioning German companies to stop the pipeline would undermine boosting relations between Washington and Berlin.
Ultimately, it’s security aid that Zelensky craves the most. Ukrainian officials have consistently lobbied U.S. policymakers for NATO membership, which would grant Kyiv the very same security guarantees against external aggression from Russia that the United States, France, Germany, and Canada enjoy. Ukraine is so insistent on this point that it apparently mischaracterized Zelensky’s June phone conversation with Biden to make it seem as if Washington supported a NATO membership action plan.
The way Ukraine looks at it, NATO membership is a no-brainer. Russia isn’t going away anytime soon, and neither is the Russian-supported separatist movement in Ukraine’s southeastern provinces. While Ukraine’s military has made tremendous strides since 2014, it can’t compete with Russia. Kyiv knows this all too well.
Regardless, what Ukraine wants is not necessarily what the U.S. and NATO need. Ever since the 2008 Bucharest summit in which then-President George W. Bush advocated on Ukraine’s behalf, France, Germany, and a good chunk of Europe have opposed bestowing NATO status upon Kyiv. This is partly because Europe as a whole doesn’t want to send European troops to defend a nation that has always been in Russia’s sphere of influence. Ditto the U.S. — despite showering Ukraine with over $2.5 billion in military aid since 2014 (Biden authorized an additional $60 million this week), it understands that treating Ukraine as a NATO ally means sending Americans to war with Russians. When asked in June whether Ukraine would join NATO, Biden responded stiffly: “School’s out on that question. It remains to be seen.”
But while U.S. policymakers are not enthusiastic about Ukraine entering the club, they haven’t closed the door either. There is a degree of moral hazard to this kind of muddle, for it not only provides Ukraine with a false sense of hope but incentivizes Kyiv to hold out for unrealistic terms with Moscow. Half-hearted promises of NATO protection could also encourage Ukraine to take greater risks, which would undoubtedly instigate a response from Russia.
Zelensky wants Biden to be a friend. Biden should act like a friend and be brutally honest with the Ukrainian leader: Inducting Ukraine into NATO is too risky of a proposition. It will add another security burden the U.S. doesn’t need, undermine whatever chances there are for a workable U.S.-Russia relationship, and compel American service members to fight and die for a country that is, frankly, more important to Moscow than it is to Washington.
Ukraine wants a clear yes or no answer. Biden should give him one.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
