Is there anyone here not from the US that would care to share what the general vibe is surrounding Ukraine joining NATO? I’d be curious to hear from an “outside” prospective.
Here in the US the general consensus seems to be “maybe, but NOT now.” People seem apprehensive about it starting WWIII. And Conservatives are frothing at the mouth about how Biden is going to get us all killed in a nuclear war (but that claim is often tossed around basically every election cycle. Trump also was supposedly going to get all of us nuked.)
The support to continue sending military aid to Ukraine is also wavering in the US. At least among the people. The politicians are still lock-step in line with their support. I’d imagine the people in Europe are still much more in support but I could be wrong?
I’m outside US, and the way people should think about it is this is a proxy WIII already.
US was all stressed out about a bunch of very empoverished Muslim countries using terrorist tactics. Well, we all got ourselves a mercenary, terrorist state with 1.5k active nukes, going around doing some business expansion.
Russian economic development policy is to wage war to take on resources. They’re doing all over Africa, it just happen there’s no white people there for the developed world to care about.
So, my point is, Russia will continue to wage wars as long as it’s economically profitable, and if NATO make it unprofitable to wage war in Europe, Russia will have to double down in Africa.
The diplomatic agreement to end this may be pretty much around convincing Russia to leave Ukraine under some veiled concession that they can go crazy in Africa. (As long as they don’t mess with Chinese interests in the region)
WWIII requires an actual superpower as an enemy
In Europe we all pretty much support Ukraine. “Peace” and stop war protests / parties are funded by Russia as part of their disinformation tactics
Of course, Ukraine can’t join NATO if it has contested territories (that works trigger article 5)
That’s what Russia hopes I think at this point. Will Ukraine give up some territories in some kind of treaty to join NATO with the remaining? I doubt it…
I’m in the US and the impression you’re getting is not the impression I’m getting. Perhaps it’s very regional or based on your in-group.
I’m assuming that means ‘when Russia won’t threaten to nuke us for it.’
Ukraine itself acknowledges that it is not realistic to become a member as long as the Russian invasion continues.
I’m reading it as “so we can use Ukraine’s future as a bargaining chip with Russia”.
I undrstand your reasoning. But you can’t ignore that there are a number of standards, not only security-related but also legal and political, that Ukraine must meet in order to be admitted to the defense alliance. It would likely require a series of reform requirements that need to be fulfilled.
Beatings will continue until morale improves
Nobody cares about Russian nuclear threats when Russia is still following all best practices in telling the world where their nukes are going and when. Either way, China doesn’t support Russia using their nukes, so Russia won’t in order to keep their support.
The truth is nobody besides the most hawkish wants Ukraine joining NATO right now, because that would grant them access to article 5 and thus boots on the ground from every other NATO state. Ukraine’ll almost certainly be invited into NATO once either they regain Crimea + other occupied lands from Russia or if they renounce their claim to those territories.
They can’t even join NATO until then. You have to have control over your border and it can’t be disputed. If they gave up that territory then it would be a question of whether countries would want to put boots on the ground but until then it’s a moot point.
I’m pretty sure nothing in NATO’s articles explicitly requires a joining state to have their territory secured, at the very least article 10 says nothing about it. I believe it’s hypothetically possible, if consensus exists among each member state, for them to grant membership to Ukraine, for Ukraine to immediately call on article 5, and for the United States and everyone else to militarily intervene immediately. It’s just that in reality no one wants that to happen.
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