One must sympathize with frustrations expressed by Ukrainian officials in the May 15 news article “NATO races to bridge divisions over Kyiv’s membership ahead of summit.” It has been 15 years since the Bucharest Summit welcomed Kyiv’s aspirations for accession to the security pact. Meanwhile, the intervening years have offered more in the way of gauzy commitments of friendship and “ironclad support” than concrete action toward formal alliance with Ukraine.
This empty rhetoric has not served Ukrainians well. On the contrary, it has gambled their lives and national sovereignty on a provocative bluff with Moscow that has twice been called.
Ukraine deserves better than this. If the United States and its NATO partners are unwilling to extend the alliance, they should say so. They should also propose an alternative. “Armed neutrality” might satisfy some of Kyiv’s wholly justifiable concerns. But Ukraine should judge warily any peace settlement predicated on U.S. military commitments beyond what has yet been proffered. Washington has an obligation to promote a diplomatic solution, but, as a decade and a half of evidence shows, it will not (and should not) come at the risk of American security.
Reid Smith, Haverford, Pa.
The writer is vice president of foreign policy at Stand Together.
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