Ukraine’s bid to join the world’s most powerful military alliance hits US roadblock

Berlin: The United States and Germany form the major roadblock to Ukraine’s achieving membership of the world’s most powerful military alliance days before world leaders meet in Lithuania to strengthen resolve against Russia’s invasion.

US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have dealt a major blow to hopes that the NATO summit’s concluding statement will endorse a “pathway” to membership, let alone invite Kyiv to join once the war is over – as demanded by some of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters in eastern Europe.

US President Joe Biden arrives at Stansted Airport in England before heading to Lithuania to attend the NATO summit.Credit: AP

NATO’s 31 members will meet for a two-day summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, from Tuesday to show support for Ukraine and give Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky a sense of what will have to be done to gain membership some time in the future.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said late on Sunday they held a phone call to discuss the NATO summit and Kyiv’s counteroffensive campaign to reclaim land taken by Russia.

“I had an important discussion with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba today ahead of this week’s NATO Summit,” Blinken said on Twitter.

The US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a separate statement that the two diplomats discussed also “progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.Credit: AP

Kuleba said on Twitter that the call was to work out details ahead of the NATO summit.

“I had a productive call with Secretary Blinken ahead of Vilnius,” Kuleba said on Twitter. “With 48 hours left, we are working to make its final decisions a win for all: Ukraine, NATO, and global security.”

Ukraine, which has been fighting a war against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops for more than 500 days, was promised in 2008 by NATO members that it would have a place at its table eventually. Zelensky has used Kyiv’s unexpected success in eroding Russia’s army to agitate for fast action on accession.

The NATO membership of Sweden, whose accession to the alliance has been blocked by both Hungary and Turkey, will be part of the agenda. New members must be approved by a unanimous vote of all existing NATO members.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will attend the summit along with other leaders from the Indo-Pacific 4, which includes Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The federal government has not taken a position on Ukraine’s NATO membership, saying it remains a decision for member nations.

But Biden, who will visit Britain before joining fellow NATO leaders in Vilnius on Sunday, doused Kyiv’s hopes of a breakthrough on membership, saying he did not think Ukraine was “ready”.

“I think we have to lay out a rational path for Ukraine to be able to qualify to get into NATO,” Biden told CNN. He said it was “premature” to “call for a vote ... now” because there were other “qualifications that need to be met, including democratisation and some of those issues”.

Biden said he had spoken to the Ukrainian president at length about the issue and pledged that the US would keep providing security and weaponry to Ukraine, as it did for Israel, while the process plays out.

“I think we have to lay out a rational path for Ukraine to be able to qualify to be able to get into NATO,” he said.

He added that Ukraine would join the alliance in the long term, saying: “NATO is an open-door policy – we are not going to shut anybody out.”

In a statement to the German parliament, the Bundestag, last month Scholz said NATO members should “take a sober look at the current situation”, urging allies to focus on strengthening the combat power of Ukraine.

The increasingly fraught negotiations over how to characterise Ukraine’s membership application threaten to expose divisions over the limits of support for Kyiv and fears in the US and Germany that NATO could be pulled into the war.

A German-deployed Patriot long-range air defence system is seen at Vilnius airport for security during the NATO summit there.Credit: AP

Zelensky is invited to the summit but has threatened not to attend if NATO does not signal concrete progress from the 2008 statement that said Ukraine “would become” a member.

He told the US-based ABC on Sunday that it was “all a matter of political will just to find the proper wording and invite Ukraine”.

Those pushing for a clear pathway for Kyiv’s membership – including Estonia and Poland – argue that anything less would imply NATO was ignoring Ukraine’s pleas for postwar protection under the alliance’s Article 5 mutual-defence clause, and would help Putin achieve one of his stated goals of the invasion: to block the country’s entry to the alliance.

But opponents say NATO cannot agree to anything that appears to suggest Ukraine is on an inevitable path to membership without first meeting rigorous standards on governance, military standards and weaponry, and that the alliance cannot commit to anything without knowing how the war will end, or when.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may snub the NATO summit.Credit: AP

“Holding NATO together is really critical,” Biden said. “I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.”

The reluctance from the US leader comes as former Australian prime minister Paul Keating branded NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg a “supreme fool” for seeking to deepen the alliance’s ties with Asia.

With Reuters

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