Global Courant
Any decision on NATO membership is a matter between the 31 Allies and the aspiring country. And so, in this case, when it comes to Ukraine, we have discussed with our NATO allies and Ukraine how we can jointly support Ukraine’s drive for Euro-Atlantic integration.
Ukraine should implement reforms to meet the same standards as any other NATO country before joining. President Biden thinks Ukraine can.
US President Joe Biden will spend three days in Europe during the NATO summit in Vilnius scheduled for July 11-12. The main topic is Ukraine and where to go from here.
Ukraine urges immediate NATO membership or viable security guarantees from NATO. But Ukraine’s position is undermined by the failure of its counter-offensive against Russia and the failure of its attempts – via sabotage, assassination and deadly drones aimed at the Kremlin – to destabilize the Putin government. Now Ukraine says it needs NATO air power to win its war.
It will be very difficult to get a NATO consensus on the road ahead, no matter how much poor Washington uses to poke fun at its European partners.
Europe is already in recession thanks to the Covid catastrophe, the sanctions against Russian energy and the massive unemployment, which affects recent immigrants. The result of all this is social unrest across Europe. France is already going through a serious uprising, and although the French situation has eased in recent days, it will come back.
Meanwhile, Germany’s governing coalition is steadily losing popular support and the AfD, Germany’s right-wing party, is now the country’s second most popular party. Olaf Scholz and his coalition partners don’t know what to do: they may try to ban AfD as a last ditch effort. Italy is also far from out of trouble.
The country has a conservative leadership, but has been plagued by unprecedented waves of immigrants from the Middle East.
Biden at the 2022 NATO summit. Photo: Screengrab/Twitter
Europe is out of money and out of bullets. It is not in the mood to give Ukraine a blank check or risk a bigger war that could spread to Europe. President Biden will have a hard time squeezing more out of Europeans.
Biden knows he cannot unilaterally use US forces, especially air power, without airbases and supply centers in Europe. At the moment, Washington has a free hand because US warplanes do not bomb Russian positions in Ukraine. However, bombing them would force a strong European response and destroy NATO.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has been pressuring Washington for advanced warplanes, saying air power would make it possible for Ukraine to win. But the only practical way to move that forward in the coming year is to operate from bases outside Ukraine with US and possibly other NATO aircraft.
This would certainly mean war in Europe and the currently ruling governments in Europe would either have to say no or be forcibly removed. It is therefore an unlikely, if very dangerous, scenario.
Washington has already indicated that it has not been able to convince its partners of Ukraine’s NATO membership. Washington is probably trying behind the scenes to create some kind of security guarantee for Ukraine, but any meaningful guarantee is probably a bridge too far.
Russia is also unsettled after the coup attempt led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Putin wants a quick military victory, as does the Russian army, which has been under heavy pressure from Prigozhin’s accusations.
Holding the line against a Ukrainian counter-offensive is not much of a victory for the Russians, as their image at home is still tarnished. It is therefore reasonable to expect that once Ukrainian losses become high enough in the coming weeks, the Russian military will take dramatic offensive steps against Ukraine.
The big unknown is what the Russian army will do: will it launch a major attack on Kiev, Kharkiv or Odessa? After Vilnius, if Moscow sees Zelensky without any expectation that NATO will come to his rescue, it will very quickly exploit the situation.
Part of the Western basis for Ukraine’s offensive was the introduction of modern technology to the battlefield, particularly represented by the appearance of the Leopard tank. Unfortunately for NATO, the Leopard tanks did not save the day for Ukraine.
So far, between 16 and 20 Leopards have been knocked out on the battlefield, along with a host of other NATO-supplied armour, including infantry fighting vehicles such as the US Bradley and mine clearance systems such as the Finnish Leopard 2R HMBV and the German Wisent 1.
Polish Leopard tanks arrive in Ukraine. Image: Substack
The Leopard main battle tank and US Abrams form the armored backbone of NATO’s land defence.
While the US and its allies have superior air power, they have sparse and inadequate air defenses compared to what Russia can bring forward. This means that in addition to artillery, a land defense must also be able to withstand Russian attack helicopters armed with missiles, deadly drones and air-launched mines.
The failure of the Leopard in Ukraine poses a huge challenge to NATO and indicates that NATO’s current “tripwire” strategy may not work.
According to the tripwire paradigm, the idea is that a first Russian strike (most likely in the Baltics because Russian troops are very close to Estonia and Latvia) can be held for several days while the US ships heavy troops to Europe. But if the tripwire is an illusion, then NATO is exposed to rapid Russian advances in Europe should an attack take place.
The bottom line is that NATO’s strategy needs to be revised, or else the Europeans and Russians need to work out a mutually acceptable security arrangement. It is exactly such an arrangement that Russia proposed to NATO in December 2021. It was rejected without discussion.
Now the ammunition cabinet is bare, also in the United States. The Russians are learning to counter advanced Western systems, a negative development for NATO’s security. It couldn’t be a worse time to risk Europe’s security by being able to stop a Russian attack.
It may be easy for British politicians to shout that they want NATO to fight in Ukraine, but London is probably not the first target of Russian missiles. Cracks in the alliance are opening faster than expected, and Europe’s weak governments are in trouble.
It will be interesting to see how Vilnius plays out. It will certainly be a propagandistic show, but there is a good chance that Vilnius will flop.
Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. This article was originally published about his substack, weapons and strategy. Global Courant republishes it with permission.
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