Ukraine has sought membership in North Atlantic Treaty Organization for more than a decade, turning its back on Moscow to seek closer security ties with the West. But after years of being rebuffed, Ukraine now looks like the unwanted third wheel in the Moscow-NATO relationship. Two weeks ago, NATO told Ukraine that its difficult road to membership was going to get even tougher next year. A day later, at a summit in Brussels, Russia agreed to do more for NATO in Afghanistan.
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Left out in the cold, Ukraine might have to turn to Moscow rather than Brussels for military protection, becoming part of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) rather than NATO. Indeed, Ukraine's presidential elections next month might well put a decisive end to the country's NATO hopes if a more Russian-oriented leader wins, as now seems likely. It is an amazing shift. Less than two years ago, Russia was threatening to point missiles at Ukraine if it went ahead with NATO membership. But now, the U.S.-led alliance has prioritized ties with the Kremlin, while stringing Ukraine along with promises it might never fulfill. The ultimate result might be an increasingly Russia-dominated Eastern Europe, with the CSTO resembling a modern version of the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact.
"In 1996, when we agreed to give up all our nukes, [NATO] agreed to guarantee our security. But they haven't done that," explains retired Major Gen. Vadim Grechaninov, president of the Atlantic Council of Ukraine, which advises the government on NATO relations. (Before it disarmed, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal behind Russia and the United States.) "The demands are increasing, but membership isn't getting any closer."
Staying neutral and detached is not really an option for Ukraine. Aside from the permanent defense dilemma of being stuck between two superpowers, Ukraine's economy is in shambles and its military is desperately poor. "Our servicemen now can't actually serve," says Grechaninov, who has been a leading voice in support of NATO membership since the 1990s. "They do a year on guard duty somewhere and then get discharged, because the government has no money to train them for anything else."
Hopes of being taken under NATO's wing have fallen flat, he says, and the meeting in Brussels gave no signs of encouragement. According to a draft of the document discussed at the meeting, NATO will ask Ukraine to carry out ever-tougher reforms in 2010 on the way to membership, even though in 2009, Ukraine was unable to meet some of the most basic targets. "Most high-cost combat training has been canceled or rescheduled for next year," says the document, obtained last month by Foreign Policy. This includes essential military exercises, such as practice jumps for paratroopers.
"We just don't have the internal resources to carry out the reforms [for joining NATO]," says Grigory Perepelitsa, the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's Institute of Foreign Policy. "Instead we are getting stuck in what was called the Warsaw Pact before, and has now just changed its name to the Tashkent pact," he said, using the unofficial name for the CSTO.
Founded in 2002 in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, the CSTO is Russia's attempt to guard military influence in the former Soviet space, which it still sees as its geopolitical birthright. So far the CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- a motley crew, and not much of a threat to NATO's 28 members, including most of the major military powers in the world. But that hasn't stopped the CSTO from barking, even if it can't yet bite. At its annual summit in Moscow last year, it said it would not stand for NATO's eastward expansion -- a clear reference to Ukraine. "Serious conflict potential is developing close to the CSTO's zone of responsibility," it said in a formal declaration. "The members of the CSTO call on NATO countries to weigh all possible consequences of the alliance's expansion to the east."
Now, the CSTO's expansion to the west seems far more likely, and at the same time, Russia's relations with NATO are flourishing. Coincidence? Probably not. At NATO's Bucharest summit in April of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to let NATO ship supplies to troops in Afghanistan across Russian territory. It was a pathway the United States desperately needed, as the southern supply corridor through Pakistan was coming under heavy attack. It was also widely seen as a thank-you gift. The day before, NATO had refused to put Ukraine and Georgia on the accelerated Membership Action Plan (MAP), which would have greatly eased their accessions. This allowed Russia to breathe easy about the alliance's eastward growth.
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