Law, Power, and Justice

The Kremlin seeks to make sure that Ukraine’s future is decided in Moscow, not Kyiv. Ukraine is fighting for the freedom to chart its own future—and a vast majority of Ukrainians want their country to become a member of NATO and the European Union.

But NATO countries are divided over when Kyiv should join. Some members, led by the Baltics, Poland, and France, want the alliance to issue a formal invitation at this July’s Washington summit. They believe that the persistence of security vacuums in Europe entices Moscow to fill those gray areas militarily—as it has in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Other members, including the United States and Germany, are not prepared to move that fast. The outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who may well be NATO’s next secretary-general, captured this perspective at the Munich Security Conference last month: “As long as the war is raging, Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO.”

NATO leaders need to step up their support for Ukraine’s defense by supplying advanced weapons, such as long-range missiles, that some NATO members have been reluctant to provide.

At the Washington summit, NATO leaders should agree to invite Ukraine when the fighting has effectively ended, either through an unlikely Ukrainian victory or through a durable cease-fire or armistice. At the conclusion of active conflict, Kyiv need not accept any loss of territory to Russia as permanent, only that any change to the status quo would need to be achieved politically, not militarily.

No longer-term efforts will matter, however, if Ukraine loses the war. That is why NATO must fortify Ukraine’s defenses and consider supplying Kyiv with weapons that are currently off the table, such as U.S. ATACMS and German Taurus long-range missiles. At the outset of the war, NATO members sought to balance support for Ukraine with the need to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia. NATO countries restricted the kinds of weapons they would send and limited the ways in which Ukrainian forces would be permitted to use them (for example, no attacks on Russian soil).