Currently, the idea is being floated that Ukraine will accept EU membership in exchange for changing the part of its constitution that fixes its goal of joining NATO. Ukraine, the UK, the US, and Russia have voiced some support for this idea. EU membership would be the compensation for Ukrainian society in exchange for abandoning the goal of joining NATO.
As a US citizen who has lived in Ukraine and with family in the country, I consider this to be entirely reasonable. The US has already made it clear many times that it will not militarily intervene on the side of the Ukrainian government. So why keep up the charade about letting Ukraine join NATO one day in the distant future, when it causes so much destruction to Ukraine itself?
However, there are difficulties with this solution.
On the EU side, allowing Ukraine to enter would violate existing EU rules about the minimum economic prosperity and required political forms of prospective EU members. In any case, the process of entering the EU takes a very long time, and currently, Ukraine is only being offered EU candidacy status – which is what Turkey or Serbia has had for decades. And Turkey controls all its territory and has a more competitive economy than Ukraine.
On the Ukrainian side, it is not so easy to change the constitution. Were there to be an illegal change of the constitution, this would simply make it easy for more radically nationalist politicians to stage a coup d’état and the war would continue with even less chance of stopping.
Ukraine is a parliamentary republic with limited presidential powers. The Ukrainian parliament must meet for 2 sessions to approve a change in the constitution. It is hard to imagine the parliament even meeting to discuss this now, given the highly nationalistic atmosphere, where plenty of Ukrainian politicians are harshly critiquing Zelensky for even going to negotiations. It is even harder to imagine a majority vote approving such a change. And finally, such a process takes 6 months at minimum – but it is now that civilians are dying, and the already poor country’s infrastructure is being destroyed.
Of course, given enough bombing annihilation of Ukraine, Ukrainian politicians could decide that such a vote is necessary. But obviously, it would be preferable to save those tens of thousands of lives before it comes to that.
This is why I would like to propose the alternative of the US formally denying Ukraine any possible entry into NATO. This is what Russia has been demanding for months and would certainly satisfy the latter in halting its military operation.
Though there would be difficulties in making such a decision, given the bureaucratic functioning of NATO, I still think it is the least unlikely way to end this war.
- NATO is mainly controlled by the USA and is less subject to bureaucratic rules than the EU.
- Denying Ukraine access to NATO would not require constitutional changes in the US, as it would in Ukraine, and would hence be much easier.
- Russia is very unlikely to halt its military operation in Ukraine until it has achieved its declared aims. To pull back would entirely discredit the existing Russian government and likely lead to its downfall, since it has identified itself so closely with this goal. Sanctions will only have severe economic effects in the coming months, whereas a bombing destruction of Ukraine is possible within coming days and weeks.
- Ukraine is much farther away from the US than from Russia and possesses far fewer economic and historical ties to the US than Russia and Russians consider Ukraine to have with itself. For this reason, it would be much easier for the US to reject any military commitments to Ukraine than it would be for Russia to abandon its demand for Ukrainian non-membership in NATO.
For all these reasons, I call on US citizens worried about the lives of Ukrainians to tell the US government to deny Ukraine entry to NATO.
To claim to care about Ukrainian lives, while also refusing to militarily intervene (a contradictory stance embraced by the US government currently) is disgustingly hypocritical. The final alternative of a nuclear confrontation with Russia must not be seriously discussed.
– An anonymous comrade from Ukraine
