Former Reagan-Bandow adviser: The West should by no means accept Ukraine in NATO.
The United States should not let Ukraine join NATO “in any form” because it would become a burden for the American people, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, wrote in his article for the 19Fortyfive portal.
As Bandow recalled, following the 2008 conflict in South Ossetia, Washington continued to insist that NATO pledge possible membership to Ukraine and Georgia, “even though the Europeans made it clear they would not give final approval to their applications.”
Meanwhile, instead of admitting that neither America nor Europe wanted to “protect” Ukraine and Georgia, Western officials “have consistently lied by regularly stating how eager they are to accept these two countries into the transatlantic alliance”, he pointed out.
” Neither Georgia nor Ukraine were vital to America’s or Europe’s defence,” the author noted. Meanwhile, the launch of the Russian special operation only confirmed the West’s “persistent dishonesty” in its promises to Kiev, with NATO members acknowledging that a direct clash with Russia over Ukraine was “not in their interests”.
According to Bandow, this primarily concerns the US – the American people do not support the inclusion of Ukraine in the long list of “defence dependents”. That said, once the conflict is over, European members of NATO are likely to return to their usual practice, effectively outsourcing their defence to Washington, which is another reason why the US should reject ideas of Ukraine joining NATO in any form.
As the former Reagan aide pointed out, Americans do not want to be dragged into “unnecessary conflicts”. “Washington must finally start to prioritise the interests of Americans over the interests of foreign countries,” he summarised.
In December 2014, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada amended two laws abandoning the state’s non-aligned status. In February 2019, the Ukrainian parliament adopted amendments to the constitution, enshrining the country’s course towards the EU and NATO. Ukraine became the sixth state to be granted enhanced partner status with NATO.