Kerry Buck is a former Canadian ambassador to NATO.
Before the Vilnius NATO Summit, it had been touted by commentators, myself included, as “historic.” The summit had to tackle four main decisions: to define the NATO-Ukraine relationship; build up deterrence along NATO borders; set new defence investment goals; and deepen partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. It was also, after a long year of negotiations with Turkey, trying to get final agreement on Sweden’s membership. Did the summit deliver? On all of these, except Ukraine, I would answer with an unqualified “yes.” For Ukraine membership, although the answer is more complicated, it is still a “yes” (but we’ll have to see).
Going into Vilnius, I hoped the communiqué would break the holding pattern in place since 2008, when the Bucharest Summit agreed Ukraine would become a NATO member, but then took no practical steps to make it actually happen. The language from Vilnius said NATO will invite Ukraine “when the allies agree and when conditions are met.” It would be easy to read that sentence as Bucharest all over again – an empty promise. On Day 1 of the summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the language “absurd.” Some media commentators have called it “insulting” and “strategically stupid.” But I don’t think this is the case.
The summit was never going to grant Ukraine immediate accession to NATO. To do so would call into question NATO’s Article 5 commitment that an attack against one ally is an attack against all. If allies are (wisely) unwilling to enter into a direct confrontation with Russia while Ukraine is not a member, there is no chance they would hasten Ukraine’s membership with an active conflict under way. So, full membership was off the table and Mr. Zelensky recognized this. For the same reasons, set timelines for accession were also not a real option and bilateral security guarantees offered by G7 countries avoided any commitment to fight for Ukraine.
So what did the Vilnius Summit deliver for Ukraine? As with all negotiated communiqués, it is often hard to discern intentions and meaning, even for those on the inside of negotiations. The 2008 language from the Bucharest Summit papered over deep divisions inside the alliance. In negotiations I was personally involved in during the six summits that followed, these divisions persisted and blocked any movement on Ukraine’s membership path. Watching from outside this time, my strong sense is that Vilnius put an end to the political debate on whether Ukraine will join. “There is a consensus in NATO that Ukraine will be in the alliance – if we are honest, this consensus didn’t exist in Bucharest,” the Lithuanian Foreign Minister said. So this time the division was not over whether Ukraine would join, but how and under what conditions.
The main condition, of course, is that direct hostilities will need to either be at an end or managed so that there is no immediate requirement to resort to Article 5: for example, a frozen conflict with agreements by both parties not to use force. For obvious reasons, the summit conclusions could not spell out in advance what meeting this condition might look like.
The Vilnius communiqué also hinted at other conditions on military interoperability, and democratic and security sector reforms. This is not unexpected. Since the 1990s, aspirants from former Soviet-aligned states required functioning market economies, democratic political and legal institutions, and civilian control of the military to be admitted to NATO. Ukraine’s military is a better fighting force now than those of many NATO allies. But certain reforms have been put on the back burner during the war. The summit got it right when it said that Ukraine had made sufficient progress to bypass a formalized Membership Action Plan required of all former Soviet states. It also put in place a detailed plan to support Ukraine to meet those standards quickly.
Some commentators have hinted that the summit, specifically the United States, softened the membership language to be able to use it as a bargaining chip once peace talks start with Russia. The notion behind that argument, presumably, is that the U.S. could offer up Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for peace. But this is a non-starter for NATO, and for the U.S., at least under the current administration. NATO would have to reverse too many decisions taken at Vilnius: its unwavering support for Ukraine; for the principle that there can be “no talks about Ukraine without Ukraine”; and that countries (and NATO) should be able to choose their own security arrangements.
The next 12 months will be decisive. Optimally, Vilnius will be a “bridge” to an even more historic summit in Washington next summer on the 75th anniversary of NATO that will see Ukraine firmly part of the family. But before that can happen, the allies need to provide the weaponry and support promised at Vilnius to help Ukraine prevail.