US President Biden has taken every opportunity over the past 16 months to celebrate NATO’s unity on Ukraine. But on one key topic, Mr. Biden finds himself somewhat isolated within the alliance: when and how Kyiv would join,
The New York Times reports.
Mr. Biden, who has been cautious about getting NATO into a direct fight with Moscow, has sought to maintain the status quo of more than a decade: a vague promise that Ukraine, now arguably the most powerful military force in Europe, will eventually join the alliance, but with no set timetable.
Now a debate has broken out among the allies that is putting pressure on Mr. Biden to support a significantly faster and more certain path to membership for Ukraine. For Mr. Biden, all the options carry considerable risks, pitting his desire not to allow any fractures to appear in NATO against his standing instruction to his staff to “avoid World War III.”
Many of the allies, especially from countries bordering Russia, want to provide Ukraine with a strong political commitment on membership ahead of a NATO summit next month in Vilnius, Lithuania. Some want a timetable and specific goals to meet for true membership, though only after the war is no longer raging, Biden administration officials said.
Krisjanis Karins, the American-born prime minister of Latvia, argued that “the only chance for peace in Europe is when Ukraine will be in NATO.” Speaking Wednesday at a strategy conference in Riga, he said that any other outcome means inevitably “Russia will come back.”
The hope in the push is that once Ukraine is a full member of the alliance, Russia would not dare to try to topple the government in Kyiv because an attack on one NATO country is considered an attack on them all. Ukrainian membership has become a “consuming debate,” both in Europe and inside the Biden administration, according to one senior U.S. official who is deeply involved in the discussions.
