Ukraine should join NATO, declared US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz during his recent visit to Poland.
In fact, this is the first public statement by a top US official, who spoke about the need to admit Ukraine to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Before, Kyiv’s aspiration to move toward NATO membership was in the best-case scenario only a possibility not to be ruled out or merely welcomed. It is worth noting that the statement by the Pentagon representative comes at a time when Ukrainian politicians are engaged in pre-election debates on whether Ukraine should join the alliance. Opponents of Ukraine’s NATO accession argue that no one in the military-political union of twenty-six developed countries of Europe and America is ready to embrace Ukraine. Paul Wolfowitz was the first to refute this assumption.
“It is particularly important to extend the values of what NATO stands for to the whole of Europe,” Wolfowitz said in a speech at Warsaw University. “Our objective of a Europe whole and free will not be complete until Ukraine is a full fledged member of Europe,” he added. He reminded his listeners that several years ago US President George W. Bush said in Warsaw “we must extend our hand to Ukraine as Poland has already done with such determination.” He also called for “continued effort to build bridges with Belarus, whose population has been deprived of freedom by an authoritarian dictator.”
Incidentally, similar signals have come from abroad not only within the context of Ukraine’s integration with NATO. During his meeting with President Leonid Kuchma Sweden’s new ambassador to Ukraine Jon Christofer Olander spoke about Sweden’s “unconditional support for Ukraine’s European aspirations.” “Sweden wants to see Ukraine in the European Union,” reported Interfax-Ukraine. Latvia’s leadership has also expressed its support for Ukraine’s aspiration to join the WTO, NATO, and the EU. Artis Pabriks, foreign minister of this former Soviet republic and current NATO and EU member, said that Riga understands the problems that Ukraine faces on its way to the EU, for which reason his country is willing to further share its experience of European and Euro-Atlantic integration.
But so far the words of Western politicians and diplomats have rarely translated into deeds. For example, during the Istanbul Summit this past June NATO did not support Ukraine’s initiative to raise the level of cooperation. This is one of the things that prompted the Ukrainian leadership to amend Ukraine’s Military Doctrine, striking off the paragraph about Ukraine’s ultimate goal of NATO membership. However, positive developments in Ukraine’s relationship with the alliance are possible during the ministerial meeting of NATO member states and Ukraine slated for this December. In this connection the latest statement by Paul Wolfowitz sounds quite symbolic. It is obvious that such words are not spoken haphazardly, and in this case they were addressed to skeptics of Ukraine’s NATO accession. Pessimism in foreign policy may perhaps be justified when it comes to Kyiv’s ambitions to join the EU, which thus far can offer Ukraine nothing more than EU neighbor status. Nonetheless, the fact that there are at least a few EU member states that are sympathetic to Ukraine’s full European integration, proof of which are recent statements, is also an important signal.
